Evaluation of ArF lithography for 45nm node implant layers

Scaling of designs to the 45nm or future nodes presents challenges for KrF lithography. The purpose of this work was to explore several aspects of ArF lithography for implant layers. A comparison of dark loss seen in a KrF resist and TARC system to that seen in an ArF system showed significant differences. While the KrF resist yielded dark loss that varied with CD and pitch, the ArF resist showed very little dark loss and no significant variation through the design space. ArF resist were observed to have marginal adhesion to various substrates. Improvements in adhesion performance were shown by pre-treating the substrate with various processes, of which an ozone clean provided the best results. Optimization of the HMDS priming conditions also improved adhesion, and it was observed that the HMDS reaction proceeds at different rates on different subsatrates, which is particularly important for implant layers where the resist must adhere to both Si and SiO2. The effect of ArF resist profile with varying reflectivity swing position is shown, and some investigation into reflectivity optimization techniques was performed. Low-index ArF TARC was shown to reduce the CD variation over polysilicon topography, and wet developable BARC was demonstrated to provide consistent profiles on both Si and SiO2 substrates. Finally, a comparison of ArF and KrF resists after As implant indicates that the ArF resist showed similar shrinkage performance, to the KrF resist.