Reduction of Line Edge Roughness in Semiconductor Photoresist by Means of a Grazing Incidence Ion Beam

As semiconductor feature sizes continue to decrease, the phenomena of line edge roughness (LER) becomes more disruptive in chip manufacturing. While many efforts are underway to decrease LER from the photoresist, post-develop smoothing techniques may be required to continue shrinking chip features economically. This work reports on one such method employing the use of an ion beam at grazing incidence along the features. This method smooths relatively long spatial length LER, a potential advantage over other smoothing techniques that focus on just molecular scale LER. LER reduction numbers Variables include beam energy and angular dependence. LER measurements are taken using Hitachi image analysis software on top-down analytical SEM measurements.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Nuclear Engineering

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2010

Author dc:creator

• Struck, Corey R.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ruzic, David N.

• Line Edge Roughness
• Line Width Roughness

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2009 Corey R. Struck

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/14655

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/14655