Dry Development With Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) And Magnetron Enhanced Etching (MIE) Technology

Two dry etch technologies are compared for application in dry development of resist. All results are obtained using the DESIRE [1,2] process. We show that MIE and RIE can give good results. Experiments were performed using a planar reactor and a hexode reactor in reactive ion etching mode. Although the develop rate is about ten times slower in the hexode reactor, selectivity and image quality is comparable to the planar reactor. Using magnetron assisted etching very high etchrates up to 3 μm/min can be obtained, but the etchrate is flowrate limited. The selectivity can be higher than in the pure RIE set-up but optimisition of the image does not require very high selectivity. The effect of the develop conditions on the lithographic contrast of the resist system are discussed. The contrast can be varied between 2 and 5 by changing these conditions.