Effect of Rinse Process on Removal of Crown Type Defects during Photoresist Development

Abstract

Defect reduction is one of the most important factors to improve the process stability and yield in the wafer fabrication process. Reduction of defects after development process is a critical issue in photolithography. A special category of post development defects is the "crown defect'' which is formed on large exposed or unexposed areas. In this work, the process was developed to remove crown defects from gate and hole patterns by optimizing the deionized water (DIW) rinse time and applying the sling effect. After testing at various conditions, it was found that 80 and 40 s DIW rinse combined with sling effect could completely remove the crown defects from gate and hole patterns, respectively, which would improve the product quality and yield.