Hoya Corporation

Yasunori Yokoya

Hideo Kobayashi

Toshiyuki Suzuki

Masahiro Hashimoto

Yasushi Okubo

Takeyuki Yamada

Keishi Asakawa

Provided is a mask blank surface treatment method for surface-treating, using a treatment liquid, a surface of a thin film, to be formed into a transfer pattern, of a mask blank having the thin film on a substrate. The thin film is made of a material that can be etched by ion-based dry etching. The concentration of an etching inhibitor contained in the treatment liquid is 0.3 ppb or less.

Surface treatment method for a mask blank, method of manufacturing a mask blank, and method of manufacturing a mask

In the photomask blank, which is an original plate of a transfer mask having a transfer pattern to be transferred to the body to be subjected to transfer on the substrate, the photomask blankincludes a light shielding filmbecoming the transfer pattern and a resist filmon the substrate, and the resist filmformed on the peripheral edge of the main surface of the substrateis removed in a predetermined region in a supported regionof the photomask blanksupported by the substrate holding member of the exposure device, so that a desired pattern positional accuracy and a desired focus accuracy are obtained, when the transfer mask having the transfer pattern obtained by patterning the light shielding filmis supported by the substrate holding member of the exposure device. With this structure, when a reticle is mounted on the substrate holding member of a stepper, the deformation of the reticle is suppressed, and lowering of a positional accuracy of the transfer pattern and the lowering of a focus accuracy can be suppressed to minimum.

Mask blank, manufacturing method of mask blank, manufacturing method of transfer mask and manufacturing method of semiconductor device

Resist patterns which minimize the standard deviations of critical dimensions within a plate and between the plates (namely which minimize the critical dimensions) are formed by a method for determining conditions for resist pattern formation comprising a resist film forming process, a resist film baking process, an exposing process, and a developing process, which method consists in preparing a plurality of plates each having a resist film formed thereon, baking the resist films on the plates under severally varying baking conditions, omitting to perform an exposing treatment on the resist films, and subjecting the resist films baked under their own baking conditions to a dissolving treatment to be severally performed under such prescribed conditions as induce partial dissolution of the resist films thereby determining as the temperature condition for baking a prospective resist film the baking temperature that minimizes the change in the uniformity of the remaining resist thickness in the plates relative to the change in the baking time among the resist films and, at the same time, determining as the time conditions for baking the prospective resist film the baking time that optimizes the uniformity in the plates of the remaining resist thickness of the resist films or minimizes the amount of reducing thickness at the baking temperature.

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Shinjuku-ku, Japan

Yasunori Yokoya