Screening of DNQ/novolac resists with e-beam exposure

We have surveyed the commercial resist market with the dual purpose of identifying diazoquinone/novolac based resist that have potential for use as e-beam mask making resists and baselining these resist for comparison against future mask making resist candidates. For completeness, such a survey would require that each resists be compared with an optimized developer and develop process. To accomplish this task in an acceptable time period we have chosen to perform e-beam lithography modeling to quickly identify the resist developer combinations that will lead to superior resists performance. We describe the development and verification of a method to quickly screen commercial i-line resists under e-beam exposure with different developers. This was accomplished by determining modeling parameters for i-line resist from e-beam exposures, modeling the resist performance, and comparing predicted performance versus actual performance. We evaluated whether the technique of combining e-beam resist modeling with lithography can be used to quickly and efficiently screen i-line resists for use in e-beam mask making. This was accomplished by comparing experimentally determined resists sensitivities and profiles with those predicted from ProBeam/3D lithography modeling software.