ArF photoresist parameter optimization for mask error enhancement factor reduction

Abstract

MEEF (Mask Error Enhancement Factor) is the most representative index which CD (Critical Dimension) variation in wafer is amplified by real specific mask CD variation. Already, as it was announced through other papers, MEEF is increased by small k1 or pattern pitch. Illumination system, just like lens aberration or stage defocus affects directly MEEF value, but the leveling or species of substrate and the resist performance are also deeply related to MEEF value. Actually, when the engineers set up the photo process of shrink structure in current device makers, they established minimum shot uniformity target such as MEEF value within wafer uniformity and wafer to wafer uniformity, besides UDOF (Usable Depth of Focus) or EL (Exposure Latitude) margin. We examined MEEF reduction by checking the difference in resist parameters and tried to correlate the results between experiment and simulation. Solid-C was used for simulation tool. The target node was dense L/S (Line/Space) of sub-80 nm and we fix the same illumination conditions. We calculated MEEF values by comparing to original mask uniformity through the optical parameters of each resist type. NILS (Normalized Image Log Slope) shows us some points of the saturation value with pupil mesh points and the aberration was not considered. We used four different type resists and changed resist optical properties (i.e. n, k refractive index; A, B, and C Dill exposure parameters). It was very difficult to measure the kinetic phenomenon, so we choose Fickian model in PEB (Post Exposure Bake) and Weiss model in development. In this paper, we tried to suggest another direction of photoresist improvement by comparing the resist parameters to MEEF value of different pitches.