Mask roughness induced LER control and mitigation: aberrations sensitivity study and alternate illumination scheme

Brittany M. McClinton; Patrick P. Naulleau

doi:10.1117/12.881678

8 April 2011 Mask roughness induced LER control and mitigation: aberrations sensitivity study and alternate illumination scheme

Brittany M. McClinton, Patrick P. Naulleau

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7969, Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Lithography II; 79691Z (2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.881678
Event: SPIE Advanced Lithography, 2011, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

Here we conduct a mask-roughness-induced line-edge-roughness (LER) aberrations sensitivity study both as a random distribution amongst the first 16 Fringe Zernikes (for overall aberration levels of 0.25, 0.50, and 0.75nm rms) as well as an individual aberrations sensitivity matrix over the first 37 Fringe Zernikes. Full 2D aerial image modeling for an imaging system with NA = 0.32 was done for both the 22-nm and 16-nm half-pitch nodes on a rough mask with a replicated surface roughness (RSR) of 100 pm and a correlation length of 32 nm at the nominal extreme-ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) wavelength of 13.5nm. As the ideal RSR value for commercialization of EUVL is 50 pm and under, and furthermore as has been shown elsewhere, a correlation length of 32 nm of roughness on the mask sits on the peak LER value for an NA = 0.32 imaging optic, these mask roughness values and consequently the aberration sensitivity study presented here, represent a worst-case scenario. The illumination conditions were chosen based on the possible candidates for the 22-nm and 16-nm half-pitch nodes, respectively. In the 22-nm case, a disk illumination setting of σ = 0.50 was used, and for the 16-nm case, crosspole illumination with σ = 0.10 at an optimum offset of dx = 0 and dy = .67 in sigma space. In examining how to mitigate mask roughness induced LER, we considered an alternate illumination scheme whereby a traditional dipole's angular spectrum is extended in the direction parallel to the line-and-space mask absorber pattern to represent a "strip". While this illumination surprisingly provides minimal improvement to the LER as compared to several alternate illumination schemes, the overall imaging quality in terms of image-log-slope (ILS) and contrast is improved.

Citation Download Citation

Brittany M. McClinton and Patrick P. Naulleau "Mask roughness induced LER control and mitigation: aberrations sensitivity study and alternate illumination scheme", Proc. SPIE 7969, Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Lithography II, 79691Z (8 April 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.881678

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