Hybrid E-beam lithography and process improvement for nanodevice fabrication

Maskless lithography is versatile and suitable for demonstrators covering a large field of applications for advanced devices. Hybrid lithography is a technique reducing significantly writing time by coupling an e-beam tool and a mask-based DUV optical tool. This novel approach involves two consecutive exposures using a unique e-beam resist following by a single development step, unlike complex "mix-and-match" multiple patterning strategies. Besides the matching of e-beam resist sensitivity to both e-beam/DUV exposures, we demonstrate high-resolution capability of CAR resists down to 30nm, while reducing writing time by a factor of 6 by using the hybrid approach. The overlay (OVL) performance between these 2 lithography steps and towards the previous levels meets also the alignment requirements and capabilities.