Lithographic behavior of carboxylate-based dissolution inhibitors and the effect of blending

We report on a lithographic study of the behavior of non- cholate tert-butylcarboxylate dissolution inhibitor (DI's) formulated in a poly(norbornene/maleic anhydride/acrylic acid/tert-butyl acrylate) 193 nm single layer resin. A comparision is made between formulations containing non- cholate DI's, cholate based DI's and formulations containing blends of the two different types of DI's. It was found that formulations containing the non-cholate materials tended to give T-topped profiles while the formulations containing cholate based materials and blends containing as little as 1% cholate based DI did not.