Shin-etsu Chemical Co., Ltd.

Intel Corporation

Toru Shirasaki

Yoshihiro Kubota

Meguru Kashida

Yuichi Hamada

Yoshihiko Nagata

Kishore K Chakravorty

David Mushell

Grace Ng

Kenichi Fukuda

Junichi Tsukada

Satoshi Kawakami

Sakae Kawaguchi

Hiroki Yoshikawa

Shigeru Konishi

Masatoshi Ishii

Akinori Nishimura

Kunihiro Ito

There is provided a pellicle container for storing a pellicle used in lithography, having a tray and a cover between which the pellicle is stored, and the tray has a pellicle mount section on which the pellicle is used to be mounted, but the tray of this container further has a plane plate, preferably a quartz plane plate, having a flatness of 10 micrometers or smaller provided on top of the pellicle mount so as to stabilize the flatness of the pellicle, especially its agglutinant layer.

Container for storing a pellicle for lithography

There is provided a pellicle for EUV lithography, which has a filter attached to a vent hole made through a pellicle frame bar for air pressure adjustment, and this filter is designed to be heat-resistant by being made of either a metal or a ceramic material, and is adhered to the pellicle frame by weldering or soldering, and also the filter has a filtration accuracy of 0.1 through 0.3 &#x3bc;m.

Pellicle for EUV exposure

There is provided a pellicle wherein the pellicle frame is formed with a protrusion which extends either inward or outward from the pellicle frame so that an air passage (vent hole) can extend in it to turn upward or downward to open in the atmosphere or in the pellicle closed space (the space interior to the pellicle frame) so that it is possible to secure a wider opening area for filtration to enable prompt air ventilation whereby the pellicle membrane does not undergo extreme inflation or deflation and thus the pellicle membrane is protected from damages.

Pellicle

There is provided a pellicle wherein the frame is cut with one or more slight-chamfers, and in particular the one cut along the inner edge of the upper annular face of the frame, to which the pellicle membrane is glued, has a slope greater than 45 degrees so that the pellicle membrane when slackened does not touch the lower ridge of the slight chamfer.

Pellicle for lithogrpahy

A pellicle for lithography, in which an agglutinant layer is so controlled that the deformation of the pellicle frame is prevented from transferring to an exposure original plate to which the pellicle is attached so that pattern transferred scarcely undergoes deformation; in particular the agglutinant layer has a Young's modulus of 0.02 to 0.08 MPa and a tensile bond strength of 0.04 to 0.08 N/mm.

Pellicle for lithography

There is provided a pellicle in which the mask-bonding agglutinant layer has the adhesion strength of 1 N/m through 100 N/m, preferably 4 N/m through 80 N/m, and more preferably the agglutinant layer has a facial flatness of 15 micrometers or smaller, and still more preferably the membrane-bonding adhesive layer has a facial flatness of 15 micrometers or smaller: for the purpose of better preventing the pellicle frame from affecting the mask to deform.

A pellicle is provided that includes a pellicle film, a pellicle frame having the pellicle film stretched over one end face thereof and having the other end face open, and a pressure-sensitive adhesion layer for adhering the pellicle frame to a mask, the pressure-sensitive adhesion layer being provided on an inner peripheral face of the pellicle frame, and the pressure-sensitive adhesion layer being capable of adhering to a side face of a mask having a mask image on a front face. There are also provided a method of mounting a pellicle that includes fixing to a side face of a mask an inner peripheral face of a pellicle frame of a pellicle that includes a pellicle film and a pellicle frame having the pellicle film stretched over one end face thereof and having the other end face open, a method of mounting a pellicle that includes adhering the pellicle to a side face of the mask that is inclined in going from the reverse face of the mask toward the front face where the mask image is provided, thus adhering the side face of the mask to the pellicle frame inner peripheral face, a pellicle-equipped mask that includes the pellicle adhered to a mask, and a mask that includes a side face that is inclined in going toward the front face where a mask image is provided.

Pellicle, mounting method therefor, pellicle-equipped mask, and mask

A pellicle frame is provided that includes a pellicle frame bar having a cross-section with a shape that has at least one triangular recess in at least one side edge of a quadrilateral having an upper edge and a lower edge parallel to each other and a cross-sectional area of no greater than 20 mm. There is also provided a lithographic pellicle that includes a pellicle film stretched over one end face of the pellicle frame via a pellicle film adhesive, and that includes an exposure master plate adhesive on the other end face.

Pellicle frame and lithographic pellicle

There is provided a pellicle in which the adhesive layer bearing the pellicle membrane is molded so flatly that the flatness of the pellicle as measured across the membrane is 10 micrometers or smaller, and this is preferably accompanied by an improved flatness of mask-bonding adhesive layer (agglutinant layer), which can be 15 micrometers to 10 micrometers or even smaller.

A pelliclefor lithography includes a pellicle frame, a pellicle membraneadhered onto the upper end surface of the pellicle frameand an agglutinant layerformed on the lower surface of the pellicle frameand the agglutinant layeris formed by hardening a curable composition containing a straight chain perfluoro compound having a perfluoro structure in a main chain. The thus constituted pelliclegenerates only a small amount of a decomposition gas even when it is used for a long time, thereby preventing solid-like foreign materials from separating out on a pattern region of a photomaskand can suppress degradation of an the agglutinant agent contained in an agglutinant layerto be used for fixing a photomaskto the pellicle frame. Further, this pelliclecan be easily peeled off from a photomaskand replaced with a new one.

A lithographic pellicle comprises a pellicle film (), a pellicle frame (), and a PSA layer (). The pellicle film () is stretched across and mounted to the pellicle frame () at its top end. The PSA layer () is disposed on the bottom end of the frame () and is capable of attaching the frame () to a substrate (). An inner PSA layer () made of a curable composition comprising a perfluoro compound having a perfluoro structure backbone is disposed on the inner wall of the frame ().

Lithographic pellicle

Provided are a pellicle for lithography which can prevent a haze from being generated on a photomask even if a short wave length laser such as an ArF excimer laser is used for a long period of time, and a method for producing a pellicle film to be attached to the pellicle for lithography. The pelliclefor lithography is comprised of a frame-like pellicle framehaving one open frame on one side of the pellicle frame and another open frame on another side of the pellicle frame; and a laser beam transmissive pellicle filmfor lithography, which is attached to the one side of the pellicle frame. The another open frame is capable of attaching to a photomaskand the pellicle film has a venting holehaving a hole size through which a gas moleculecan pass but not a foreign particle

Pellicle for lithography and method for manufacturing pellicle film

A handling tool for handling a pellicle which is used in the lithography carried out in a manufacturing process of semiconductor devices, comprising a handle, a main shaft connected with a fore-end of the handle to form a T-shaped part, two parallel arms protruding forward from the both ends of the said main shaft orthogonally to form a U-shaped part, and four pellicle frame holders of which two are each provided on the inward side surface of each arm respectively, wherein the arms are designed in a manner such that they are both capable of moving towards and away from each other so as to be able to adjust the arm-to-arm distance, and the said holders are provided so that they can grasp the frame's side surfaces at the four corners of the pellicle frame when the said arms are closed.

Pellicle handling tool

There is provided a pellicle for lithography which is capable of preventing or at least restricting the outgas from its mask-bonding agglutinant layer from entering the hollow of the pellicle by virtue of a unique structure of the mask-boding agglutinant layer, that is, the agglutinant layer is formed of two or more juxtaposed endless belts of which the inner-most belt that faces the pellicle hollow is made of a substance which is non-agglutinant while at least one of the other belts is agglutinant; when the outer-most belt is also made of a non-agglutinant substance, the outgas is completely prevented from escapting from the pellicle.

There is provided a pellicle in which the mask-bonding adhesive is formed to have a corner-rounded cross section in a shape akin to a trapezoid whose upper parallel side represents the face of the mask-bonding adhesive layer by which the adhesive layer is attached to the pellicle frame, and whose lower parallel side is not shorter than the upper parallel side, and the base angles of the trapezoid are 90 degrees or smaller but not smaller than 75 degrees, when the lower parallel side is assumed to be the base of the trapezoid.

Growing community of inventors

Annaka, Japan

Toru Shirasaki