Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography - EUVL Defects

EUVL Defects

EUVL faces specific defect issues analogous to those being encountered by immersion lithography. Whereas the immersion-specific defects are due to unoptimized contact between the water and the photoresist, EUV-related defects are attributed to the inherently ionizing energy of EUV radiation. The first issue is positive charging, due to ejection of photoelectrons freed from the top resist surface by the EUV radiation. This could lead to electrostatic discharge or particle contamination as well as the device damage mentioned above. A second issue is contamination deposition on the resist from ambient or outgassed hydrocarbons, which results from EUV- or electron-driven reactions. A third issue is etching of the resist by oxygen, argon or other ambient gases, which have been dissociated by the EUV radiation or the electrons generated by EUV. Ambient gases in the lithography chamber may be used for purging and contamination reduction. These gases are ionized by EUV radiation, leading to plasma generation in the vicinity of exposed surfaces, resulting in damage to the multilayer optics and inadvertent exposure of the sample.

Of course mask defects are also a known source of defects for EUVL. Reducing defects on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) masks is currently one of the most critical issues to be addressed for commercialization of EUV lithography. The defect core, namely the pit or particle, can originate either on the substrate, during multilayer deposition or on top of the multilayer stack. The printability of the final defect will depend on the phase change and the amplitude change of light at a given position. The net phase change and/or amplitude change adds to the intrinsic effect of the core defect and its influence on the growth of the multilayer stack during deposition. The buried defects are particularly insidious, and even 10 nm defects may be considered risky. The phase shift caused by an undetected 3 nm mask substrate flatness variation is sufficient to produce a printable defect. The principle behind this is a quarter-wavelength deviation from the flat surface produces a half-wavelength optical path difference after reflection. The light that is reflected from the flat surface is 180 degrees out of phase with the light reflected from the quarter-wavelength deviation. It has been shown that even a 1 nm deviation from flatness would lead to a substantial reduction (~20%) of the image intensity. In fact, defects of atomic scale height (0.3-0.5 nm) with 100 nm FWHM can still be printable by exhibiting 10% CD impact. Like a lens, any defect which effectively produces a phase shift scatters light outside the defect region. The amount of light that is scattered can be calculated. Furthermore, the edge of a phase defect will further reduce reflectivity by more than 10% if its deviation from flatness exceeds 3 degrees, due to the deviation from the target angle of incidence of 84 degrees with respect to the surface. Even if the defect height is shallow, the edge still deforms the overlying multilayer, producing an extended region where the multilayer is sloped. The more abrupt the deformation, the narrower the defect edge extension, the greater the loss in reflectivity.