Ultrasensitive metal-organic cluster resist for patterning of single exposure high numerical aperture extreme ultraviolet lithography applications

BackgroundAn incredible increase in the integration of electronic chips has pushed the semicon industries to endorse high numerical aperture (h-NA ∼ 0.5), extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography (EUVL) (λ ∼ 13.5 nm) at the commercial scale. Induction of h-NA postulates EUV resists that could outperform the resolution, line pattern roughness, and sensitivity (RLS) trade-off for chip fabricators, which is currently extremely limited.AimThe development of EUV resist to balance RLS trade-off as well as overcome throughput limitations of h-NA EUV system to facilitate high volume semiconductor manufacturing.ApproachHere, we developed indium-methacrylic acid-based metal-organic clusters resist for h-NA, EUVL. To examine the h-NA single exposure patterning potential of the resist, prescreening by sub-10 nm next-generation lithography (NGL) tools such as electron beam lithography (EBL), and helium ion beam lithography (HIBL) were conducted as a prelude to EUV exposure.ResultsDense ∼13 nm, (l/s) patterns at ∼45 and ∼30 μC / cm2 were well resolved by EBL and HIBL, on the top this the line edge roughness (LER) was 2.48 ± 0.04 nm, and etch resistance ∼1.98 and ∼0.34 times lower than Si and SiO2 / Si systems. Also, In-MAA MOCs resist shows ultra-sensitivity of 2.3 mJ / cm2 towards h-NA EUVL for patterning up to 26 nm half-pitch line patterns with LER ∼2.36 ± 0.16 nm.