Lower BW and its impact on the patterning performance

Patterning solutions based on ArF immersion lithography are the fundamental enablers of device scaling. In order to meet the challenges of industry technology roadmaps, tool makers in the DUV lithography area are continuously investigating all of the interactions between equipment parameters and patterning in order to identify potential margins of improvement. Cymer, a light source manufacturer, is fully involved and is playing a crucial role in these investigations. As demonstrated by recent studies[1], a significant improvement to multiple patterning solutions can be achieved by leveraging light source capabilities. In particular, bandwidth is a key knob that can be leveraged to improve patterning. While previous publications[1,2] assessed contrast loss induced by increased bandwidth, this work will expand the research in the opposite direction and will investigate how patterning can be affected by improved image contrast achieved through a reduction in bandwidth. The impact of lower bandwidth is assessed using experimental and simulation studies and provide persuasive results which suggest continued studies in this area.