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Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 51 (2012) 06FC05 (8 pages)  |Previous Article| |Next Article|  |Table of Contents|
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Study of Development Processes for ZEP-520 as a High-Resolution Positive and Negative Tone Electron Beam Lithography Resist

Mohammad Ali Mohammad1, Kirill Koshelev1,2, Taras Fito1,2, David Ai Zhi Zheng1, Maria Stepanova1,2, and Steven Dew1

1Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2V4, Canada
2National Institute for Nanotechnology NRC, 11421 Saskatchewan Drive, Edmonton, AB T6G 2M9, Canada

(Received November 30, 2011; revised January 24, 2012; accepted February 8, 2012; published online June 20, 2012)

ZEP brand electron beam resists are well-known for their high sensitivity and etch durability. The various performance metrics such as sensitivity, contrast, and resolution of ZEP resist depend strongly on the development process. In this work, we investigate the development of ZEP-520 resist through contrast curves, dense gratings, and surface roughness measurements using three different classes of developer systems of varying solvation strength, ZED-N50, methyl isobutyl ketone (MIBK) : isopropyl alcohol (IPA) 1:3, and IPA : H2O 7:3, at the ambient temperature (22 °C) and cold (-15 °C) development conditions. In order to provide a deeper insight into the ZEP development process, we propose a novel kinetic model of dissolution for ZEP, and develop an efficient analytical method that allows determining the microscopic parameters of ZEP dissolution based on experimental contrast curves. We also observe experimentally and characterize the negative tone behavior of ZEP for dense grating patterning and compare its performance with positive tone behavior.

URL: http://jjap.jsap.jp/link?JJAP/51/06FC05/
DOI: 10.1143/JJAP.51.06FC05


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