Thermal flow and chemical shrink techniques for sub-100 nm contact hole fabrication in electron beam lithography

In the recent ITRS roadmap, electron beam based lithography would provide an approach to leading IC technologies from the generation of 180 nm. to sub-100 nm. As a consequence, high resolution and sensitivity resists for electron beam lithography are required. Suitable process enhanced techniques for improving resolution of resists is also essential. Chemically amplified resists have been widely used in deep UV optical lithography for high throughput considerations. Recently, resist thermal flow and chemical shrink techniques have achieved 100 nm patterns by utilizing conventional deep UV optical lithography. We characterized positive chemically amplified resists UV-86 (Shipley) and MES-1EG (JSR) for high-resolution electron beam lithography. We demonstrated thermal flow and chemical shrink techniques for sub-100 nm contact hole fabrication in electron beam lithography.