Negative tone development (NTD) has dramatically gained popularity in 193 nm dry and immersion lithography, due to their superior imaging performance [1, 2 and 3].
Popular negative tone developers are organic solvents such as n- butyl acetate (n-BA), aliphatic ketones, or high-density alcohols such as Methyl Isobutyl Carbinol (MIBC). In this work, a comparative study between ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UPE) and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) POU filtration for n-BA based NTD has been carried out.
Results correlate with the occurrence or the mitigation of micro bridges in a 45 nm dense line pattern created through immersion lithography as a function of POU membrane.