The semiconductor industry relies on EUV lithography to produce smaller and more advanced chips, and the success of this technology depends on the use of EUV pellicles. These thin, transparent films act as a protective barrier for the EUV photomask during the lithography process. By preventing particles and contaminants from reaching the photomask, the pellicle helps ensure that the final product is free of defects. As the EUVL technology has advanced, the pellicle needs more than 90% EUV transmittance and withstand higher power levels of above 30W/cm2 (600W), while also needing to have hydrogen-radical durability for a long pellicle lifetime. This report presents a newly developed pellicle composed of several layers suitable for HVM 600W EUV lithography. The change in pellicle components after EUV exposure was evaluated using Rutherford backscattering (RBS) analysis. In addition, the ultimate tensile strength of the pellicle is verified by the bulge test.
Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) has been receiving considerable attention in the semiconductor industry for mass-produce high-resolution patterns of 10 nm or lower. In high volume manufacturing (HVM), the pellicle is an essential component to protect an expensive photomask from
contamination of particles so that cost and yield of EUVL can be improved. As the EUVL has been dramatically developed, the pellicle has to be a very thin enough to transmit EUV light and has to withstand above 400W power. In addition, it must have the hydrogen radical durability for long pellicle lifetime.
In this work, a full size (110×144 mm2) pellicle is manufactured as shown in Fig.1. The pellicle composited of the several layers has above 90% transmittance and processes 10K wafers at more than 400W power. The change of pellicle components before and after EUV exposure is evaluated by Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS). Furthermore, advanced pellicle with 92% transmittance and above 600W of power is under
developing.
Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) has received a considerable attention in the semiconductor industry as a promising candidate to achieve the high resolution pattern beyond 10nm. To achieve it, pellicle is essential to prevent the reticle from particle contamination during EUV scanning process. In this study, we present the full-size pellicle for EUVL. Full-size EUV pellicles with SiNx or single-crystalline Si core films were successfully fabricated, and the highest EUV transmittances obtained were 83% and 91%, respectively. Various capping layers were deposited on top of the Si or SiNx core films, and these pellicles were exposed to 355nm UV laser in order to emulate the EUV exposure. Especially, after EUV exposure, Ru emission layer exhibited cooling effect (ΔT) of 600-800 °C with 3nm on SiNx membrane The highest transmittances of full size pellicles with Ru emission layer on SiNx and Si core films obtained were 81% and 88%, respectively.
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