Riichiro Takahashi

Novel development technique using ozonated water

Two kinds of development processes were investigated. One is two-step development in which surface treatment using ozonated water was employed between the two steps of the development. The other is development in which ozonated water and hydrogenated water were employed in the pre-treatment step and the post-treatment step. The above-mentioned processes were applied to KrF resist process of 130nm generation. By pre-treatment using ozonated water and two-step development using ozonated water in inter-treatment, the shot-to-shot CD variation of isolated line (line width = 180nm) and the intra-shot variation were improved from 6.6nm to 4.4nm and from 13.5nm to 8.6nm, respectively. And the total variation was greatly improved from 15.0nm to 8.6nm. Moreover, the number of defects was greatly decreased by post-treatment using ozonated water and hydrogenated water continuously.