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Text Book:
and a d P. B. G Griffin
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
Photolithography g p y( (Chap. p 1) )
Basic lithography process
Apply pp y p photoresist Patterned exposure Remove photoresist regions Etch wafer Strip remaining photoresist
Photoresist Deposited Film Substrate Film deposition Etch mask Photoresist application Exposure
Mask
Light
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Development
2
Etching
Resist removal
2000 by Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River NJ
Lithography - Chapter 5
Lithography
The ability to print patterns with submicron features and to place patterns on a silicon substrate with better than 0.1 um precision. Lithography is arguably the single most important technology in IC manufacturing
Gains have traditionally been paced by the development of new lithography tools, masks, photoresist materials, and critical dimension etch processes
Considerations:
Resolution Exposure field Placement accuracy (alignment) Throughput Defect density (mask, photoresist and process)
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2000 by Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River NJ
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
0.7X in linear dimension every 3 years. Placement accuracy 1/3 of feature size. 35% of wafer manufacturing costs for lithography lithography. Note the ??? - single biggest uncertainty about the future of the roadmap.
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2000 by Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River NJ
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
Definitions
Critical Dimensions (CD)
Dimensions that must be maintained
CD Control
About 10% of minimum feature size. Expressed as 3 3-sigma sigma as three standard deviations of the feature size population must be within the specified 10% of the mean)
Placement or Alignment Accuracy Optical Lithography used through 0.18um to 0.13 um generation. ( g (described in text) ) X-ray, e-Beam and extreme ultraviolet are options beyond 0.1 um.
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
Wafer Exposure
It is convenient to divide the wafer printing process into three parts
A: Light source, B. Wafer exposure system, C. Resist.
P+ N Well
P+
N+ P Well
N+
Aerial image is the pattern of optical radiation striking the top of the resist. Latent image is the 3D replica produced by chemical processes in the resist.
Positive Photoresist
exposed photoresist dissolves when processed p
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
Important Aspects
Masks
Design, Fabrication, Reuse and Maintenance
Photoresist
Material, material properties, develop, operation during etch or mask process, process post process removal
All
Line width Alignment
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
A. Light Sources
Decreasing feature sizes require the use of shorter wavelengths, . Traditionally mercury (Hg) vapor lamps have been used which generate many spectral lines from a high intensity plasma inside a glass lamp lamp.
Electrons are excited to higher energy levels by collisions in the plasma. Photons are emitted when the energy is released. g line = 436 nm (typical ( yp in 1990s) ) i line = 365 nm (used for 0.5 m, 0.35 m)
(1)
Issues include finding suitable resists and transparent optical components at these wavelengths.
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SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
Optical System
Proximity Printing
Projection Printing
Contact printing is capable of high resolution but has unacceptable defect densities (minimal diffraction effects, low cost, contact contaminants and defects) Proximity printing cannot easily print features below a few m (diffraction effects exist, may be used for x-ray systems) Projection printing provides high resolution and low defect densities and dominates today (diffraction a concern)
Typical projection systems use reduction optics (2X - 5X), step and repeat or step and scan mechanical systems, print 50 wafers/hour and cost $10 - 25M.
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
Diffraction (1)
A simple example is the image formed by a small circular aperture (Airy disk). N t th Note that t a point i t image i is i formed f d only l if: if
0, d , or f 0
R=
1.22 f d
1.22 f/d
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Lithography - Chapter 5
Resolution
The denominator is defined as the numerical aperture: NA n sin
Where represents the ability of the lens to collect diffracted light.
(3)
R=
0.61 = k1 NA NA
(4)
k1 is an experimental parameter which depends on the lithography system and resist properties ( 0.4 - 0.8). Obviously resolution can be increased by:
decreasing k1 Decreasing increasing NA (bigger lenses)
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
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Lithography - Chapter 5
Depth of Focus
While resolution can be increased by:
decreasing k1 Decreasing D i increasing NA (bigger lenses)
R=
0.61 = k1 NA NA
(4)
Higher NA lenses also decrease the depth of focus (DOF) (DOF). (See text for derivation.)
DOF = =
2( NA)
= k2
(NA)
(5)
k2 is usually experimentally determined. Thus a 248nm (KrF) exposure system with a NA = 0.6 would have a resolution of R 0 0.3 3 m (k1 = 0 0.75) 75) and a DOF of 0.35 m (k2 = 0.5).
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
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Lithography - Chapter 5
Light Source
MTF =
(6)
Intensity at Mask 1
Position
Position
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
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Lithography - Chapter 5
Spatial Coherence
Finally, another basic concept is the spatial coherence of the light source. source
Light Source Condensor Lens Mask
Practical light sources are not point sources. Therefore, the light striking the mask will not be plane waves.
The spatial coherence of the system is defined as or often as Typically, S 0.5 to 0.7 in modern systems
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
S=
(7) ( ) (8)
S=
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Lithography - Chapter 5
Lithography - Chapter 5
Photoresist
Designed to respond to incident photons by changing their properties when exposed to light.
Long-lived response require a chemical change
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Lithography - Chapter 5
Processing
Start with clean wafer Spin-on p photoresist p
Adhesion promoter may be required Viscosity and spin rate determine thickness and uniformity Create a film of 0.6 to 1 um depth
Develop (remove unwanted photoresist) Etch Postbake to harden as an etchant mask Remove Photoresist
Chemically or in an oxygen plasma
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2000 by Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River NJ
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
Resolution
Diffraction limited resolution in the resist image
Resist
The ability to withstand etching or ion implantation or whatever after postbake
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
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Lithography - Chapter 5
Df
Typical g-line and i-line resists achieve contrast values, , of 2 - 3 and Df values of about 100 mJ cm-2. DUV resists have much higher contrast values (5 - 10) and Df values of about 20 - 40 mJ cm-2.
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
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Lithography - Chapter 5
Critical MTF
1.0 Ex xposure Dose 0.75 0.5 0.25 0 Position D0 Areal Image Df
The aerial image and the resist contrast in combination, result in the quality of the latent image produced. (Gray area is partially exposed area which determines the resist edge sharpness.) By analogy to the MTF defined earlier for optical systems, systems the CMTF for resists is defined as D f D 0 101 / 1 (12) = 1/ CMTFresist = D f + D 0 10 + 1 Typical CMTF values for g and i-line resists are about 0.4. Chemically amplified DUV resists achieve CMTF values of 0.1 - 0.2. Lower values are better since in general CMTF < MTF is required for the resist to resolve the aerial image.
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
20
Lithography - Chapter 5
The Th systems use global l b l alignment li difficult alignment on each die full mask difficult use steppers instead to improve overlay accuracy
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
Measurements of Masks
Check Masks for Features and Defects
Scan Make a new mask or Correct the errors
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
Resist pattern
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
R=
V23 L L = = S I15 t W W
W = S L
I15 V23
resistor
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
R + R2 W Li = Ri 1 2 S
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
26
Lithography - Chapter 5
(P, t ) = C (W )cos(t + (t ))
or, in complex exponential notation,
(13)
(W , t ) = Re{U (W )e
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
jt
} where U (W ) = C (W )e
27
j ( P )
(14) ( )
Light Source
Condenser Lens
Mask
Photoresist on Wafer
Lithography - Chapter 5
The mask is considered to have a digital transmission function: After the light is diffracted, it is described by y the Fraunhofer diffraction (far field) integral: where fx and fy are the spatial frequencies q of the diffraction pattern, defined as
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
(15)
(x, y) = t(x , y )e
++ 1 1
2j f x x + f y y
dxdy
(16)
fx =
28
x y and f y = z z
2000 by Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River NJ
Lithography - Chapter 5
( f , f ) = F {t(x , y )}
x y 1 1
(17)
The light intensity is simply the square of the magnitude of the field, so that
I ( fx, fy )=
(f , f )
x y
x z
= F {t (x1 , y1 )}
(18)
Mask
w/2
t(x)
Example - consider a long g slit. The Fourier rectangular transform of t(x) is in standard texts and is the sin(x)/x function.
Condenser Lens Mask Objective Obj ti or Projection Lens Photoresist on Wafer
F{t(x)}
Light Source
I(x')
x y Plane
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
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Lithography - Chapter 5
But only a portion of the light is collected. This is characterized by a pupil function:
1 if P( f x , f y ) = 0 if
1
f x2 + f y2 <
NA (19) ) ( NA f x2 + f y2 >
{F {t (x , y )}P( f , f )}
1 1 x y
(20)
( x, y )
(21)
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Lithography - Chapter 5
ATHENA simulator (Silvaco). Colors correspond to optical intensity in the aerial image.
3 2 1 Microns s 0
Microns 1 0 -1 2 -2
1 Microns 0
-1 -2 -3 -3 -2 -1 1 0 Microns 2 3
-1 -2
-2
-1
0 Microns
-2
-1
0 Microns
Exposure system: NA = 0.43, partially coherent g-line illumination ( = 436 nm). No aberrations or defocusing. Minimum feature size is 1 m.
Same example except that Same example S l except that h the illumination the feature size has been wavelength has now been reduced to 0.5 m. Note changed to i-line the poorer image. ill i ti illumination ( = 365 nm) ) and the NA has been increased to 0.5. Note the p image. g improved
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SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
Latent Image The second step in lithography simulation is the calculation of the latent image in the resist.
N+
P+
P+
N+
N Well
P Well
Th The light li ht intensity i t it during d i exposure in the resist is a function of time and position because of Light g absorption p and bleaching. g Defocusing. Standing waves.
I ( x, y, z ) = I i ( x, y )I r ( x, y, z )
where Ii(x,y) is the AI intensity and Ir(x,y,z) models latent image effects.
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
(22)
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Lithography - Chapter 5
ATHENA Simulation
Calculation of light intensity distribution in a photoresist layer during exposure using the ATHENA simulator.
0
0.4 M Microns
A simple structure is defined with a photoresist layer covering a silicon substrate which has two flat regions and a sloped sidewall. Th The simulation i l i shows h the h photoh active compound (PAC) calculated concentration after an exposure of 200 mJ cm-2.
0 0.8 1.6 Microns 2.4
0.8
1.2
Lower PAC values correspond to more exposure. The color contours th correspond thus d to t the th integrated i t t d light intensity from the exposure.
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2000 by Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River NJ
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
Photoresist Exposure
The light incident is primarily absorbed by the PAC which is uniformly distributed in the resist.
Note: this analysis neglects standing wave effects
Resist bleaching:
PAC becomes more transmissive as it becomes exposed, exposed as the PAC converts to carboxylic acid
M Modeling: d li The Th probability b bili of f absorption b i i is proportional to the light intensity and the absorption coefficient.) ) dI (23) = ( z , t ) I
dz
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
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Lithography - Chapter 5
Exposure Model
The absorption coefficient depends on the resist properties and on the PAC resist = A m + B where A and B are resist parameters (first two Dill parameters) with A the absorption coefficient of bleached and B nonbleached resist. Defining the percentage of unexposed resit
m=
(24)
[PAC ] [PAC ]0
(25)
m is a function of time (m=1 unexposed t=0, m=0 fully exposed) and is given by (with C another Dill parameter dm = C I m dt Substituting (24) into (23) (23), we have: dI = ( A m( z , t ) + B ) I dz Eqns. Eqns (26) and (27) are coupled equations which are solved simultaneously by resist simulators.
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
(26) (27)
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Lithography - Chapter 5
T Transmittance
Light Source
1 0.75 0.5
Light Detector
T0 0.25
200
400
600
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
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Lithography - Chapter 5
Photoresist Baking
A post t exposure b bake k is i sometimes ti used d prior i t to d developing l i th the resist i t pattern. tt This allows limited diffusion of the exposed PAC and smoothes out standing wave patterns. Generally this is modeled as a simple diffusion process (see text).
0
0.4 Microns
Microns
04 0.4 0.8
0.8
1.2
1.2
1.6 Microns 2.4
0.8
0.8
1.6 Microns
2.4
Simulation on right after a post exposure bake of 45 minutes at 115 C. The color contours again correspond to the PAC after exposure. Note N t that th t th the standing t di wave effects ff t apparent t earlier li h have b been smeared d out t b by thi this bake, producing a more uniform PAC distribution.
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
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Lithography - Chapter 5
(28)
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
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Lithography - Chapter 5
k k C [PAC ] F1 = F2 = D R D n k D + k R [PAC ]
r=
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
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Lithography - Chapter 5
Developing Model
0 0.4 0.8 1.2 1.6 Microns
Microns 0
Micro ons
0.4
0.8
1.2
0.8
2.4
0.8
1.6 Microns
2.4
E Example l of f the h calculation l l i of f a developed d l d photoresist h i layer l using i the h ATHENA simulator. The resist was exposed with a dose of 200 mJ cm-2, a post exposure bake of 45 min at 115 C was used and the pattern was developed for a time of 60 seconds, all normal parameters. The Dill development model was used. Center - part way through development. Right Ri ht - complete l t development. d l t
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
40
Lithography - Chapter 5
Future Trends
Optical lithography will be extendible to the 65 nm generation (maybe further ). Beyond that, there is no general agreement on which approach to use. Possibilities include e e-beam, beam e e-beam beam projection (SCALPEL), x-ray and EUV. y be required q for these systems. y New resists will likely
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
Projection Optics
Light Sources: 248193 nm (KrF and ArF excimer lasers)
Immersion Optics: use a fluid instead of air Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUVL) Resolution Enhancement Technology (RET) Absorbance Modulation Optical Lithography (AMOL) Electron and Ion Beam Lithography X-ray Lithography Nanoimprint a o p t Technology ec o ogy
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2000 by Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River NJ
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
Lithography - Chapter 5
SILICON VLSI TECHNOLOGY Fundamentals, Practice and Modeling By Plummer, Deal & Griffin
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