Lam Research Corporation

Chenghao Wu

Timothy William Weidman

Boris Volosskiy

Katie Lynn Nardi

Kevin Li Gu

Samantha SiamHwa Tan

Disclosed herein are methods and apparatuses for exposing an organic metal-oxide film to a blanket UV treatment prior to a lithographic patterning operation. A blanket UV treatment may be used to shift a solubility curve of the film, such that a lower EUV dose may be used to pattern the film. Additionally, a blanket UV treatment may be used after development to further cure the film.

Pre-exposure photoresist curing to enhance EUV lithographic performance

Dry development of resists can be useful, for example, to form a patterning mask in the context of high-resolution patterning. Dry development may be advantageously accomplished by a method of processing a semiconductor substrate including providing in a process chamber a photopatterned resist on a substrate layer on a semiconductor substrate, and dry developing the photopatterned resist by removing either an exposed portion or an unexposed portion of the resist by a dry development process comprising exposure to a chemical compound to form a resist mask. The resist may be an EUV-sensitive organo-metal oxide or organo-metal-containing thin film EUV resist.

Dry development of resists

Imaging layers on the surface of a substrate may be patterned using next generation lithographic techniques, and the resulting patterned film may be used as a lithographic mask, for example, for production of a semiconductor device.

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Berkeley, CA, United States of America

Chenghao Wu