STATUS AND FUTURE OF DUV PHOTORESISTS FOR THE SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY

This paper reviews the development of positive DUV resists at IBM and Shipley. The review begins with APEX-E the prototypical chemically amp lified positive DUV resist used throughout the semiconductor industry. The paper then follows the emergence of new resist technology to over come the weaknesses of first generation DUV resists like APEX-E. These improvements include feature-specific resists for low k(1) processing , improved delay stability, improved PEB sensitivity, better etch resi stance, and reduced substrate dependence. A new series of annealing ty pe resists, UV5, UV6, and Titan have demonstrated all of these improve ments.