Study of EUV reticle storage effects through exposure on EBL2 and NXE

Rik Jonckheere; Chien-Ching Wu; Veronique de Rooij-Lohmann; Dorus Elstgeest; Henk Lensen; Philipp Hönicke; Michael Kolbe; Victor Soltwisch; Claudia Zech; Frank Scholze; Remko Aubert; Vineet Vijayakrishnan Nair; Eric Hendrickx

doi:10.1117/12.2573125

4 November 2020 Study of EUV reticle storage effects through exposure on EBL2 and NXE

Rik Jonckheere, Chien-Ching Wu, Veronique de Rooij-Lohmann, Dorus Elstgeest, Henk Lensen, Philipp Hönicke, Michael Kolbe, Victor Soltwisch, Claudia Zech, Frank Scholze, Remko Aubert, Vineet Vijayakrishnan Nair, Eric Hendrickx

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 11517, Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography 2020; 115170Z (2020) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2573125
Event: SPIE Photomask Technology + EUV Lithography, 2020, Online Only

Abstract

A parallelism is reported between reticle lifetime experiments undertaken on TNO’s EBL2 platform and wafer printing on the ASML NXE EUV scanner installed at imec. EBL2 mimics reticle impact due to exposure of ten thousand wafers in NXE representative conditions in less than a day. In-situ X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) has shown that a local high-dose EUV exposure removes surface carbon and reduces ruthenium oxide to ruthenium. These effects not only happen at the directly exposed location, but equally centimeters away. Repeating XPS after a period of reticle storage outside of the vacuum, revealed regrowth of such contamination layer and re-oxidation of ruthenium. This learning based on EBL2 explains a small but significant trend noticed in critical dimension measurement results on wafer through a batch of wafers exposed on NXE, depending on the prior storage conditions of the reticle. During first exposures following reticle entry into vacuum reticle storage effects become gradually undone. Both storage-induced mask contamination effects are shown to build-up beyond one month. Local effects of the high-dose EUV exposure remain measurable by EUV reflectometry after several weeks of storage in air.

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Rik Jonckheere, Chien-Ching Wu, Veronique de Rooij-Lohmann, Dorus Elstgeest, Henk Lensen, Philipp Hönicke, Michael Kolbe, Victor Soltwisch, Claudia Zech, Frank Scholze, Remko Aubert, Vineet Vijayakrishnan Nair, and Eric Hendrickx "Study of EUV reticle storage effects through exposure on EBL2 and NXE", Proc. SPIE 11517, Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography 2020, 115170Z (4 November 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2573125

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