Novel technologies in coater/developer to enhance the CD stability and to improve the defectivity toward N7 and smaller nodes

EUV lithography has been brought into mass production. To enhance the yield, improvements in critical dimension (CD) stability, and defectivity still remain of utmost importance. In order to enhance the defectivity performance on contact hole pattern, continuous work has been executed.1 As the result of process optimizations presented at SPIE 2018 for 24 nm contact hole half pitch pattern, single- and multi-closed hole modes as caused by particles included in coating materials, called “in-film particles”, or stochastic failures are the major of defects modes. For defectivity improvement work done this year, optimization of material dispense has been carried out in an attempt to improve the defectivity of single- and multi-closed holes as caused by in-film particles. As the result, totally 19 % of defectivity improvement was obtained as compared with conventional dispense conditions. On the other hand, CD variability is comprised of several components such as wafer to wafer, field to field, within field, and local CD. In addition, not only coater/developer but also scanner, mask, and materials contribute to the variations. In this paper, CD uniformity (CDU) optimization on also contact hole 24 nm half pitch pattern has been executed to improve each component from the standpoint of coater/developer. As a result of the optimization of development process, 13.9 and 6.4 % of field to field and within field CDU improvement have been achieved, respectively.