IC and MEMS Fabrication

Class 9: Lithography II

Muhammad Mustafa Hussain, PhD

Professor, ECE, Pur due Univer sity
E-mail: mmhece@pur due.edu

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 Ray Tracing and Diffraction

1. Light travels in a straight line in a region

of constant refractive index
2. The angle of incidence equals the angle
of reflection
3. Snell’s Law: n1sinq1 = n2sinq2

Diffraction plays critical role

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Propagation of A Plane Wave
q The Huygens-Fresnel Principle can be
used to construct the wavefront versus
position as it propagates
q This principle states that every
unobstructed point of a wavefront at a given
instant in time acts as a source of a
spherical secondary wavelet of the same
frequency as the primary wave
q The amplitude of the optical field can be
found by superimposing all these wavelets,
considering their relative magnitudes and
phases
a) This superposition simply results in a propagating plane wave
b) Only the source points in the aperture serve as sources of Huygens wavelets and
the resulting propagating pattern beyond the aperture involves diffraction
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Imaging

High spatial frequency information: rounding of sharp corner

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Contact Exposure
q In Fresnel diffraction (often called near
field), the image plane is close to the
aperture (or mask)
q The light travels directly from the
aperture to the plane where the image is
formed with no intervening lens system
(contact and proximity lithography)
q In Fraunhofer diffraction (often called far
field), the image is far from the aperture
and a lens is normally placed between the
aperture and the image plane to capture
and focus the image (projection
lithography)

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Power of Lens

q n: index of refraction of the material

between the object and the lens (usually
air with n =1 in lithography systems)
q a: maximum half angle of the diffracted
light that can enter the lens or the
acceptance angle of the lens – ability of
the lens to collect diffracted lights
q a may be limited by the physical size of
the lens itself, or by an entrance aperture
or pupil in front of the lens
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Depth of Focus

The factor of 1/2 is often replaced by k2

because the 1/2 value is appropriate at the
Rayleigh resolution limit but does not take into
account the increase in depth of focus for
larger features nor the dependence in practice
on other parameters like the resist process

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Example
We can estimate the resolution and depth of focus of two lithography systems, a DUV
stepper operating at l = 193 nm and an EUV stepper operating at 13.5 nm
For simplicity we’ll assume both systems have an NA = 0.6, k1 =0.75 and k2 = 0.5

As expected, the EUV system has much better resolution (>10X), but it also has a very
small depth of focus which means that a very thin resist layer would need to be used and
the mechanical position of the wafer would need to be very precise to produce an in
focus image

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Modulation Transfer Function
q The MTF is really a measure of the
contrast in the aerial image produced by
the exposure system
q Generally an exposure system needs to
achieve a MTF value of 0.5 or larger in
order for the resist to properly resolve the
features
q Deep UV (DUV) resists can work with
somewhat smaller MTF values
q It should be obvious that the MTF
depends on the feature size being printed
and that the MTF will be closer to 1 (ideal)
for larger feature sizes

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Ideal Point Source

Point source cannot always be used because: (1) as s approaches 0, the optical intensity
also approaches 0 à infinite exposure time; (2) MTF degrades

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Aerial Images
q In the contact printing case, a very high-
resolution image is produced because the
mask and resist are assumed to be in hard
contact
q If the wafer and mask are separated
slightly as in a proximity printing system,
the resolution degrades because of near
field Fresnel diffraction effects
q If a lens is placed between the mask and
wafer and focus the aperture on the wafer,
an image characterized by Fraunhofer (far
field) diffraction is produced

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Idealized Contract Curves

Contrast is really a measure of the resist’s ability to distinguish light from dark areas
in the aerial image the exposure system produces [g, i line = 2-3, DUV = 5-10]
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Quality of Images

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Corrective Measure: NA↑

The mask geometry is shown with the The mask geometry is shown with the
solid black lines. 193 nm stepper, NA = solid black lines. 193 nm stepper, NA =
0.8, 0.1 μm feature sizes 0.93, 0.1 μm feature sizes

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Phase Shift Mask
q Phase shift masks (PSM) are an
additional strategy that can be used to
modify the mask pattern in order to
produce a better aerial image
q Conventional masks only make use of
light intensity information to form an image
q Conventional masks are “binary” i.e.
black or white
q PSM make use of phase information as
well as intensity information to improve the
aerial image.

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Double Patterning

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Spacer Transfer Layer (STL)

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Sub-wave Length Lithography

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