EUV mask surface cleaning effects on lithography process performance

The reflective, multilayer based, mask architectures for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography are highly susceptible to surface oxidation and contamination. As a result, EUV masks are expected to undergo cleaning processes in order to maintain the lifetimes necessary for high volume manufacturing. For this study, the impact of repetitive cleaning of EUV masks on imaging performance was evaluated. Two, high quality industry standard, EUV masks are used for this study with one of the masks undergoing repeated cleaning and the other one kept as a reference. Lithographic performance, in terms of process window analysis and line edge roughness, was monitored after every two cleans and compared to the reference mask performance. After 8x clean, minimal degradation is observed. The cleaning cycles will be continued until significant loss imaging fidelity is found.