The impact of both intrinsic and plasma-induced stress of a TiN hardmask on line wiggling was investigated via etching of p-SiOCH with 28 nm pitch, line and space (L/S) EUV resist patterning. Experimental stacks included crystalline PVD TiN with an intrinsic stress of +0.1 GPa and several PEALD TiN films with varying crystallinity and intrinsic stresses ranging from -3.6 GPa (compressive) to +0.2 GPa (tensile). Results confirmed that reduction of intrinsic TiN stress can prevent wiggling1 when the mask is not exposed to plasma during process flow. However, when TiN is exposed to plasma as in a typical back end of line (BEOL) process2-3, compressive stress increased in all films and resulted in wiggling even in the patterned PVD TiN sample with low intrinsic stress. This global increase in compressive stress due to plasma exposure did not correlate with intrinsic stress values, therefore, this work suggests a greater focus should be placed on plasma-induced stress to avoid line wiggling when selecting a TiN film. Further investigation found that increased surface roughness of the TiN mask can decrease the risk of wiggling, and that surface roughness is influenced by p-SiOCH etch selectivity, indicating mask surface roughness should also be considered when evaluating line wiggling in BEOL, p-SiOCH etching.
To further enable device scaling in HVM, new patterning materials are needed to meet the more stringent requirements such as line width and edge roughness (LWR and LER), dose sensitivity, pattern collapse, etch resistance and defectivity. The continuous progression of the shrinking of resist feature sizes will be accompanied by the scaling-down of the resist film thickness to prevent pattern collapse and to compensate for low depth-of-focus for high-NA EUV lithography. However, if we reduce the resist film thickness, we must also reduce the underlayer (UL) hardmask film thickness for optimum pattern transfer. As an alternative to spin-on underlayers, deposited ULs can be a potential candidate as it is possible to produce very thin uniformly deposited ULs, with the freedom to incorporate different elements to improve adhesion and modify etch selectivity. In this paper, we will discuss deposited ULs with film thickness scaled down to 3.5 nm for EUV lithography patterning as well as etch performance for pitch 32 and 28 line/space structures. We will also discuss about the possibility to modify the ULs to match the surface energy of the photoresist in use in order to minimize pattern collapse. Additionally, with scaled-down deposited ULs, we were able to obtain very similar post-litho unbiased roughness values (LWR 2.23 nm and LER 1.7 nm) as 10 nm spin-on reference UL (LWR: 2.26 nm and LER 1.66 nm). We will discuss more such details in terms of surface roughness, dose sensitivity, post-litho and post-etch LWR, LER, pattern collapse and defectivity in the presentation. Such ULs could become useful for high-NA EUV lithography when the litho stack is expected to scale down in thickness.
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