Over-coating agent for forming fine patterns and a method of forming fine patterns using such agent

Abstract

It is disclosed an over-coating agent for forming fine-line patterns which is applied to cover a substrate having thereon photoresist patterns and allowed to shrink under heat so that the spacing between adjacent photoresist patterns is lessened, further characterized by comprising a water-soluble polymer which contains at least methacrylic acid and/or methyl methacrylate as the constitutive monomer thereof. Also disclosed is a method of forming fine-line patterns using the over-coating agent. The advantages of the invention are that the exposure margin is large, that the dimension control of photoresist patterns can be reflected on the dimension controllability in forming fine-line patterns, that the dimension control and planning of forming fine trace patterns after treatment for thermal shrinkage can be attained with ease in the stage of photoresist patterning, that the original photoresist pattern profile can be kept as such and the top of the photoresist pattern is not rounded after thermal shrinkage, that the degree of thermal shrinkage of the over-coating agent is large and thus the agent is effective in forming fine-line patterns.