Study of Major Factors to Affect Photoresist Profile on Developable Bottom Anti-Reflective Coating Process

摘要

As critical dimensions continue to shrink in lithography, new materials will be needed to meet the new demands imposed by this shrinkage. Recently, there are needs for novel materials with various substrates and immersing process, including double patterning process, a high resolution implant process, and so on. Among such materials, Developable Bottom Anti-reflective Coating material (DBARC) is a good candidate for high resolution implant application as well as double patterning. DBARC should have reflectivity control function as an ordinary BARC, as well as an appropriate solubility in TMAH-based conventional developer after exposure and bake process. The most distinguished advantage of DBARC is to skip BARC etch process that is required in normal BARC process. In spite of this advantage, the photoresist profile on DBARC could be influenced by components and process conditions of DBARC. Several groups have tried to solve this issue to implement DBARC to new process. We have studied material-related factors affecting photoresist profiles, such as a polymer, photo-acid generators (PAGs), and additives. And we explored the effect of process condition for photoresist and DBARC. In case of polymer, we studied the effect of dissolution rate in developer and crosslinking functionality. For PAGs and additives, the effect of acid diffusivity and cross-linking degree according to their bulkiness were examined. We also evaluated coated film stability in a photoresist solvent after BARC bake process and compared lithographic performance of various DBARC formulations. In addition, the effect of photoresist profile with bake condition of photoresist and DBARC were investigated. In this paper, we will demonstrate the most influential factors of DBARC to photoresist profile and suggest the optimum formulation and process condition for DBARC application.