Background: Repeated exposure of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) masks to UV radiation exacerbates the thermal deformation of the constituent materials. In particular, for systems with high numerical apertures (NAs) in next-generation EUV lithography machines, new structures and materials are needed to negate the shadow and three-dimensional effects of masks. However, because masks with such materials and structures have larger absorption and thermal expansion coefficients than conventional EUV masks, they may undergo new, unidentified thermal deformations.
Aim: This study aimed to evaluate the temperature accumulation and thermal deformation of EUV masks owing to radiation exposure.
Approach: The temperature accumulation and thermal deformation in EUV masks were compared and analyzed using various cooling conditions and patterns as well as various materials and structures.
Results: The thermal deformation increased with increasing pattern density. The results indicate that more careful control could be required regarding the pattern density and shape. Compared with conventional EUV masks, the high-NA EUV masks exhibited considerable thermomechanical deformations owing to their different multilayers and absorbers. However, the deformation could be reduced to the level of conventional EUV mask deformation through appropriate cooling.
Conclusions: The thermal deformation due to exposure is intensified depending on the mask structure, material, and pattern change; however, the thermal deformation can be alleviated with proper mask cooling.
Background: Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) pellicles are affected by heat deformation due to energy absorption during EUV exposure. Defects can accelerate thermal deformation, thereby shortening pellicle lifetime.
Aim: We compared the thermal stress and thermomechanical stability with different defects, focusing on the internal defects that occur during the fabrication of EUV pellicles.
Approach: Pellicles resistant to high thermal stress can be fabricated based on mechanical properties. To evaluate this, we compared the mechanical stability based on robustness against thermal stress during exposure.
Results: Our results show that external contaminants had a greater contribution than internal defects on the mechanical stability of pellicles. However, pellicles with internal defects exhibited increased thermal stress and decreased mechanical stability compared with defect-free pellicles during EUV exposure.
Conclusions: Thermal stress is used as an indicator in most studies to predict pellicle lifetime, but evaluation of thermomechanical stability including thermal stress and mechanical durability is required because the material can break under low thermal stress depending on the mechanical properties, and pellicle defects can be a major cause of shortening the lifetime of pellicles.
One of the challenges to achieving high volume manufacturing (HVM) using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) is to improve the line width roughness of photoresist (PR). In EUV having high photon energy, the intensity of the light source is insufficient, and a large number of photons cannot enter the resist, and thus a fine pattern with small roughness cannot be made. Roughness is not determined by only one factor but is manifested by various and complex photochemical reactions such as non-uniform photon distribution, dose, acid diffusion, and the reaction of PR components. In the EUV lithography process, the roughness varies even under the same conditions owing to stochastic effects and random printing failures may occur. Ultimately, to develop PR that will be applied to the mass production of EUV, it is necessary to study the factors affecting roughness formation among various phenomena occurring inside the resist. Through computational simulation, line edge roughness and line width roughness were calculated by reflecting stochastic effects in various aspects such as the initial distribution of materials in PR, photon density, and acid. To implement a finer pattern using EUV lithography, we must alleviate roughness by controlling the acid diffusivity and chemical reaction of the quencher. On the other hand, the ionization energy, which affects the interaction between the electron energy and the acid, changed the acid generation efficiency, but as a result, did not significantly affect the roughness.
As the width of the line decreases, there are advantages such as improved performance, reduced unit price, and reduced power consumption, but high accuracy is required. Heat deformation by exposure light is one of several factors that reduces accuracy. These variations cause overlay and focus problems and can sometimes lead to serious overlay and CD variation. Because the linewidth is reduced to x nm, the overlay error of several nm and the critical dimension (CD) value are also greatly affected. Currently, it can be solved to some extent by stage adjustment and fine-tuning, but the problem still remains. In this paper, we checked the mechanism of wafer deformation due to energy absorption during exposure, changing the conditions of pattern linewidth and line and space (L/S).
The lifetime of the EUV pellicle might be reduced, if contaminant particles accumulate on the pellicle during the EUV lithography process. Through the simulation, the temperature change, deformation, and stress of the pellicle with the type, shape, size, number and location of contaminated particles were examined. And the lifetime expectancy of pellicles for EUV lithography of various structures was compared through a relative comparison of failure points due to thermal deformation. The difference in thermal properties such as heat capacity, thermal conductivity, emissivity, and thermal expansion coefficient of the pellicle and the contaminated particle generated thermal stress in the area where the pellicle and the contaminated particle abutted, and the thermal stress increased as the exposure was repeated. In addition, if exposure continued even after the convergence of temperature, deformation, and thermal stress, physical fatigue due to exposure and cooling could accumulate and shorten the lifetime of the pellicle.
Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) uses reflective optics due to the high absorption of EUV sources, and EUV masks consist of multiple layers of composites to increase reflectance. As repeated exposure proceeded, heat accumulation due to energy absorption and resulting heat deformation were observed in each layer constituting the EUV mask. In particular, the absorber is made of a material with high absorption rate, so the temperature accumulation and deformation are different depending on the part with and without the absorber. This means that thermal distortion can cause mask overlay and local critical dimension uniformity (LCDU) problems, resulting in lower process yields. In this paper, we will examine the temperature accumulation and heat deformation depending on the presence of absorber when electrostatic chuck (ESC) and hydrogen cooling are applied.
Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is the most promising candidate for sub-1x nm pattering. CO2 laser irradiates to a Sn droplet and then, EUV radiation can be emitted. In this process, infrared radiation (IR) is simultaneously emitted 3 to 5 times more than EUV radiation. In order to suppress IR, spectral purity filter (SPF) [8] at collector mirror and dynamic gas lock (DGL) [4] are used. Nevertheless, some amount of IR still reaches to the wafer and it can lead to wafer heating issue, so that we investigated temperature and deformation of the wafer by using finite element method (FEM) simulation. Two different silicon wafer types are compared. There is a difference in temperature and deformation between single layered wafer with and without the bottom chuck. We also found that the temperature increased more with added stacks like hard mask or photoresist on the top of the wafer.
Thermal and structural deformations of extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) masks during the exposure process may become important issues as these masks are subject to rigorous image placement and flatness change. The reflective masks used for EUVL absorb energy during exposure, and the temperature of the mask rises as a result. This can cause thermomechanical deformation that can reduce the pattern quality. Therefore, it is necessary to predict and optimize the effect of energy transmitted from the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source and the resultant patterns of complex multilayer structured EUV masks. Our study shows that temperature accumulation and deformation of the EUV mask are dependent on the absorber structure.
The thermo-optical optimization of extreme-ultraviolet pellicles for 3 nm node or smaller is described. Various material and multilayer structure candidates for the optimized pellicles are simulated using a finite element method. The result shows that a silicon-cored pellicle has relatively high transmission, whereas a graphene-cored pellicle shows relatively low stress compared with its material tensile strength.
The analysis of the thermal stress and the extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) pellicle is important since the
pellicle could be easily damaged since the thickness of the pellicle is 50 nm thin due to 90% required
EUV transmission. One of the solution is using a high emissivity metallic material on the both sides of the
pellicle and it can lower the thermal stress. However, using a metallic coating on pellicle core which is
usually consist of silicon group can decrease the EUV transmission compared to using a single core layer
pellicle only. Therefore, we optimized thermal and optical properties of the pellicle and elect three types
of the pellicle. In this paper we simulated our optimized pellicles with 500W source power. The result
shows that the difference of the thermal stress is small for each case. Therefore, our result also shows that
using a high emissivity coating is necessary since the cooling of the pellicle strongly depends on
emissivity and it can lower the stress effectively even at high EUV source power.
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