Yasutaka Morikawa

Vortex via process: analysis and mask fabrication for contact CDs <80 nm

In an optical vortex, the wavefront spirals like a corkscrew, rather than forming planes or spheres. Since any nonzero optical amplitude must have a well-defined phase, the axis of a vortex is always dark. Printed in negative resist at 248nm and NA=0.63, 250nm pitch vortex arrays would produce contact holes with 80nmk1<0.4), depending on exposure dose. Arrays of vortices with kpitch>0.6 can be patterned using a chromeless phase-edge mask composed of rectangles with nominal phases of 0°, 90°, 180° and 270°. Analytic and numerical calculations have been performed to characterize the aerial images projected from such vortex masks using the Kirchhoff-approximation and rigorous EMF methods. Combined with resist simulations, these analyses predict process windows with ≈10%Elat and >200nm DOF for 80nm CDs on pitches greater than or equal to 250nm at σ greater than or equal to 0.15. Smaller CDs and pitches are possible with shorter wavelength and larger NA while larger pitches give rise to larger CDs. At pitch >0.8μm, the vortices begin to print independently for σ greater than or equal to 0.3. Such “independent” vortices have a quasi-isofocal dose that gives rise to 100nm contacts with Elat>9% and DOF>500nm at σ=0.3. The extra darkness of the nominal 270° phase step can be accommodated by fine-tuning the etch depth. A reticle fabrication process that achieves the required alignment and vertical wall profiles has been exercised and test masks analyzed. In an actual chip design, unwanted vortices and phase step images would be erased from the resist pattern by exposing the wafer with a second, more conventional trim mask. Vortex via placement is consistent with the coarse-gridded grating design paradigms which would - if widely exercised - lower the cost of the required reticles. Compared to other ways of producing deep sub-wavelength contacts, the vortex via process requires fewer masks and reduces the overlay and process control challenges. A high resolution negative-working resist process is essential, however.

Decomposition difficulty analysis for double patterning and the impact on photomask manufacturability

Double patterning technology (DPT) is one of the most practical candidate technologies for 45nm half-pitch or beyond while conventional single exposure (SE) is still dominant with hyper NA avoiding DPT difficulties such as split-conflict or overlay issue. However small target dimension with hyper NA and strong illumination causes OPC difficulty and small latitude of lithography and photomask fabricated with much tight specification are required for SE. Then there must be double patterning (DP) approach even for SE available resolution. In this paper DP for SE available resolution is evaluated on lithography performance, pattern decomposition, photomask fabrication and inspection load. DP includes pattern pitch doubled of SE, then lithography condition such as mask error enhancement factor (MEEF) is less impacted and the lower MEEF means less tight specification for photomask fabrication. By using Synopsys DPT software, there are no software-induced conflicts and stitching is treated to be less impact. And also this software detects split-conflicts such as triangle or square placement from contact spacing. For estimating photomask inspection load, programmed defect pattern and circuit pattern on binary mask are prepared. Smaller MEEF leads less impact to defect printing which is confirmed with AIMS evaluation. As an inspection result, there are few differences of defect sensitivity for only dense features and also few differences of false defect counts between SE and DP with less NA. But if higher NA used, DPs inspection sensitivity is able to be lowered Then inspection load for DP would be lighter than SE.

Pattern decomposition for double patterning from photomask viewpoint

Double Patterning Technology (DPT) has been evaluated and reported since 32nm half pitch is recognized to be required with conventional immersion ArF lithography. DPT requires pattern decomposition into two pattern sets and the decomposition becomes more complex for especially so-called logic pattern including irregular pattern placement and many-vertices polygons. The innocent decomposition often creates forced segmentation of those polygons and two different aspect of photomasks such as density or substantial line direction. Those decomposed photomasks not only produce large possibilities of different error behavior but also leave annoyance complexity untouched. It is well known that line-ends and dense twisted lines produce large MEF. Then tighter specification for photomask fabrication have been required since the resolution limit was getting below the exposure wavelength. So the decomposition that creates tight patterns into separate two photomasks has possibilities of the fabrication load lighter. In this paper, the decomposition of criteria for DPT which helps photomask fabrication with a small possibilities is evaluated and discussed. Furthermore though its getting to popular that overlay and CD uniformity of photomasks for DPT impact to completed CD with wafer exposure directly, considering other errors such as CD shift or phase error which are supposed to recover by exposure in addition to those errors are also studied.

Capability of etched multilayer EUV mask fabrication

Recently, development of next generation extremely ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) equipment with high-NA (Numerical Aperture) optics for less than hp10nm node is accelerated. Increasing magnification of projection optics or mask size using conventional mask structure has been studied, but these methods make lithography cost high because of low through put and preparing new large mask infrastructures. To avoid these issues, etched multilayer EUV mask has been proposed. As a result of improvement of binary etched multilayer mask process, hp40nm line and space pattern on mask (hp10nm on wafer using 4x optics) has been demonstrated. However, mask patterns are easily collapsed by wet cleaning process due to their low durability caused by high aspect ratio. We propose reducing the number of multilayer pairs from 40 to 20 in order to increase durability against multilayer pattern collapse. With 20pair multilayer blank, durable minimum feature size of isolated line is extended from 80nm to 56nm. CD uniformity and linearity of 20pair etched multilayer pattern are catching up EUV mask requirement of 2014.

In-field CD uniformity control by altering transmission distribution of the photomask, using Ultra fast pulsed laser technology

As pattern feature sizes on the wafer become smaller and smaller, requirements for CD variation control has become a critical issue. In order to correct CD uniformity on the wafer, the DUV light transmission distribution of the photomask was altered using an ultra-fast pulsed laser technology. By creating a small scattering pixel inside the quartz body of the mask, a multitude of such points creates Shading Elements inside the quartz according to a predetermined CD variations distribution map. These Shading Elements reduce the dose of scanners laser illumination onto the wafer per a local area. Thus by changing the local light intensity, inside the exposure field, to a required level during the photolithographic process the wafer CD is changed locally inside the field. This complete process of writing a multitude of Shading Elements inside the mask in order to control the light transmission and hence wafer level CD locally is called the CD Control (CDC) process. We have evaluated the tool utilizing Ultra fast laser pulses (CDC 101) for local transmission and CD controllability on the wafer. We used Binary and Att-PSM test masks and three kinds of test patterns to confirm the sensitivity of transmission and CD change by the attenuation levels of Shading Elements which is sequentially changed from 0% to 10%. We will compare the AIMS results to printed CD on wafer or simulation results, so that we can correlate the transmission change and CD change by the attenuation levels. This paper also reports the CD uniformity correction performances by using attenuation mapping method on Binary mask. We also cover how Shading Elements affect the phase and transmission on the Att-PSM.

Defect repair performance using the nanomachining repair technique

Nanomachining is a new technique for repairing photomask defects. The advantages of this technique are no substrate damage, precise edge placement position and Z height accuracy when compared with current Laser zapper or FIB GAE repair techniques. This technique can be applied to any type of opaque defects at any type of film materials and quartz bump defects on Alternating Aperture Phase Sifting Masks (AAPSM). Furthermore, these characteristics enable complex pattern repairs of most advanced photomasks for 193nm lithography and enables iterative repair to achieve improved printing performance when analyzed with an AIMS 193nm tool. Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. (DNP) has been producing AAPSMs in mass production for quite some time. The standard type of AAPSMs manufactured has been etched quartz, single trench with an undercut structure. On this structure, there is a potential for quartz defects underneath the chrome overhang based on the combination of dry and wet etching to create the undercut. For this study, we fabricated this kind of designed quartz defects and repaired them using the nanomachining system. These types of defects are particularly difficult to repair perfectly because they exist underneath the chrome overhang. We will show some options to achieve better printing results through the repair of these kinds of defects. In this report, we confirmed basic performance of this technique such as edge placement accuracy, Z height accuracy and AIMS printability. Additionally, we also tried to repair some complex defects such as quartz defects of AAPSM, quartz defects of CPL mask and oversized Serifs for application options. We will show these nanomachining repairs with evaluation results of printing performance simulated by the AIMS 193nm tool.

Advanced FIB mask repair technology for 100 nm/ArF lithography

The satisfactory data have been confirmed on the photomask repairing performance for 100nm-node/ArF-generation lithography with the model SIR5000 photomask repair system. In this report, the repairing ability is presented with transmittance and edge placement data. The edge placement was almost 15nm(3sigma) on binary and MoSi-HT masks, and there isn’t any transmittance loss in the AIMS193 data.

Manufacturing of half-tone phase-shift masks I: blank

Half-tone phase shift mask (HT-PSM) blanks for i-line (365 nm) and g-line (436 nm) lithography, using chromium composites as a half-tone shifter, are brought into production. A bilayer structure of a 10 - 20 nm thick opaque, conductive chrome layer and a phase-shifting CrON layer is proposed, which can be formed by continuous deposition of the two layers and etched continuously by the process similar to that of the conventional chrome photomask. It shows low visible light transmission of less than 30% so that it can be inspected, and also shows enough conductivity to decay the excess charge during electron beam writing. HT- PSMs made of these blanks can be cleaned by sulfuric acid at 100 degree(s)C and can be used at least up to an irradiation of 1 MJ/cm2, when used for i-line exposure. The specification for the transmission is (target +/- 1)% for any point on any plate, and 0.7% range for any point on one plate, where the target ranges from 6% to 10%. The specification for the phase shift is currently (180+/- 10) degree(s).

Lithographic performance comparison with various RET for 45-nm node with hyper NA

In order to realize 45 nm node lithography, strong resolution enhancement technology (RET) and water immersion will be needed. In this research, we discussed about various RET performance comparison for 45 nm node using 3D rigorous simulation. As a candidate, we chose binary mask (BIN), several kinds of attenuated phase-shifting mask (att-PSM) and chrome-less phase-shifting lithography mask (CPL). The printing performance was evaluated and compared for each RET options, after the optimizing illumination conditions, mask structure and optical proximity correction (OPC). The evaluation items of printing performance were CD-DOF, contrast-DOF, conventional ED-window and MEEF, etc. Its expected that effect of mask 3D topography becomes important at 45 nm node, so we argued about not only the case of ideal structures, but also the mask topography error effects. Several kinds of mask topography error were evaluated and we confirmed how these errors affect to printing performance.

Advances in vortex via fabrication

Vortex masks composed of rectangles with nominal phases of 0°, 90°, 180° and 270° have been shown to print sub-100nm vias and via arrays when projected into negative resist using 248nm light. Arrays with pitches down to 210nm and CDs as small as 64nm have been reported. While promising, 248nm vortex via images showed some anomalies: The developed contacts were somewhat elliptical, with four different repeating via shapes. The common depth of focus for these four classes of via was limited by their different behaviors through focus. Phase edges in isolated vortex pair structures tended to print, also limiting the useful DOF. These issues can be ameliorated by employing 193nm illumination and a new negative-tone resist. Smaller NAs and higher coherence extend the common depth of focus and larger NAs can be used to print even more tightly spaced patterns. Advanced optical proximity correction techniques can also be applied to reduce the via ellipticity and placement error, and a more optimal choice of geometrical phase depth reduces pattern variability. Further developments and incremental improvements in vortex via design and processing may make it the method of choice for via patterning at the 45nm node.