Maskless EUV lithography: an already difficult technology made even more complicated?

Yijian Chen

doi:10.1117/12.899967

21 March 2012 Maskless EUV lithography: an already difficult technology made even more complicated?

Yijian Chen

Proceedings Volume 8323, Alternative Lithographic Technologies IV; 83231Q (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.899967
Event: SPIE Advanced Lithography, 2012, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

In this paper, we present the research progress made in maskless EUV lithography and discuss the emerging opportunities for this disruptive technology. It will be shown nanomirrors based maskless approach is one path to costeffective and defect-free EUV lithography, rather than making it even more complicated. The focus of our work is to optimize the existing vertical comb process and scale down the mirror size from several microns to sub-micron regime. The nanomirror device scaling, system configuration, and design issues will be addressed. We also report our theoretical and simulation study of reflective EUV nanomirror based imaging behavior. Dense line/space patterns are formed with an EUV nanomirror array by assigning a phase shift of π to neighboring nanomirrors. Our simulation results show that phase/intensity imbalance is an inherent characteristic of maskless EUV lithography while it only poses a manageable challenge to CD control and process window. The wafer scan and EUV laser jitter induced image blur phenomenon is discussed and a blurred imaging theory is constructed. This blur effect is found to degrade the image contrast at a level that mainly depends on the wafer scan speed.

Citation Download Citation

Yijian Chen "Maskless EUV lithography: an already difficult technology made even more complicated?", Proc. SPIE 8323, Alternative Lithographic Technologies IV, 83231Q (21 March 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.899967

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