Microelectronic Engineering

Traditionally, lithography has been the driving force behind the exponential growth rate of Microelectronics, thanks also to the easy scalability of MOS devices. Even if up to now every prophecy for a slow-down of the growth rate has been proven false, ...

We report the results of a modeling study of the image formation process in EUVL. Using a rigorous diffraction scheme, we compute the propagation of the mask image in the multilayer stack. The same approach is used to compute the aberrations induced by ...

We have fabricated systems with three - dimensional photon confinement. These structures are based on expitaxially grown heterostructures providing one dimension of photon confinement. In the plane photonic confinement effects are obtained by ...

The present status and future prospects of the advanced mesoscopic semiconductor devices are discussed as possible key devices for the next generation electronics. Basic concepts of mesoscopic devices, nanofabrication technology issues and actual ...

The European & International Development Program on Ion Projection Lithography is competing with several other Next Generation Lithography technologies to be implemented in future semiconductor manufacturing for structure sizes below 100nm. A recent ...

Exciting developments in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have been brought about by applying know-how gained through the IC revolution to the task of building bothmicromechanical andmicroelectronic elements into engineering microsystems. Some of ...

Both electron beams and ion beams have unlimited resolution as far as semiconductor manufacturing is concerned. Both have serious throughput limitations because of the difficulties of engineering suitable masks and because of space charge (particle-...

PREVAIL - Projection Reduction Exposure with Variable Axis Immersion Lenses represents the E-Beam Projection approach to Next Generation Lithography which IBM is pursuing in cooperation with Nikon as alliance partner. This paper discusses the challenges ...

Arrays of discrete, lithographically-patterned magnetic elements have been proposed as a new generation of ultra-high density patterned magnetic storage media. Interferometric lithography has been used to make prototype arrays over large areas with ...

Novel etching techniques, such as the use of pulse-time-modulated plasma and a selective radical generation method (''radical injection method''), have been developed. The pulse-time-modulated plasma makes possible highly selective, high-rate, and ...

The development of micro- and nanofabrication, their applications, and their dependent industries has progressed to a point where a bifurcation of technology development will likely occur. On the one hand, the semiconductor industry (at least in the USA)...

We discuss the fabrication of a FLASH EEPROM floating gate memory device with a cell size of 0.0896@mm. The floating gate level utilized an alternating aperture phase shift mask, a binary mask was used to expose the control gate level. Linewidth changes ...

In this study, the lens plus mask contribution to the Critical Dimension (CD) dispersion across the lens field is investigated by Electrical Linewidth Measurements (ELM) at the gate level. It is shown that theseCD dispersions are an important ...

The patterning of 100 nm features via contact photolithography is described. Details of a conformable embedded-amplitude mask and pattern transfer into a tri-layer resist with this mask are presented. In-plane pattern-placement errors for this ...

Alternating phase shift technology has been shown to substantially improve focus latitude and resolution for several years. However, the use of phase shift masks to improve the process latitude in gate level lithography has been hindered by the lack of ...

We investigate the possibility to use a new class of wide band gap fluoride dielectric crystals as optical elements for 157 nm photolithography. The rare earth doped or non-doped crystals can be used as passive or active optical elements in the VUV. ...

With optical lithography driving device-manufacturing capability to subwavelength dimensions, new effects that were once safely ignored are playing a crucial role in determining process quality. One such critical effect results from the consideration of ...

In this paper we describe the use of 248 nm lithography to define 0.18 @mm contact holes. For this application we evaluated two Attenuated Phase Shifting Masks (APSM) with transmission 3 and 6 %, in combination with a resist commonly used for binary ...

A multiple exposure technique is used to print various types of patterns with critical dimensions much smaller than the wavelength of light used for exposure. The process latitude of the exposure can be very large because it is limited by the large ...

The absorption spectra in the vacuum ultraviolet region of the spectrum from 140 to 200 nm, of various Si- based polymers and polymeric materials with aliphatic and aromatic structure for 157nm lithographic applications are discussed in this paper. Si-...

A variety of lens aberration effects degrade lithographic performance metrics such as resolution, image fidelity, pattern placement, and best focus. Additionally, these may be different for different pattern orientations. Resolution enhancement ...

AlSi"xN"y (x~0.31, y~0.45) thin film as a new embedded material for AttPSM in 193 nm lithography was presented. With the good controlling of plasma sputtering of Al (100~130 W) and Si (20~50 W) under Ar (75 sccm), and nitrogen (2.5~5 sccm), AlSi"xN"y ...

The fabrication of ULSI devices requires a wide focus margin. A newly developed vacuum pin chuck has been used to decrease the margin reduction caused by wafer chucking. This paper describes the influences of pin support and back-surface waviness on ...

Hexamethyldisiloxane (HMDSO) is used as coating material in a conventional ECR-PECVD process. By simply adjusting the gas flow rate ratio, the material can be varied to have suitable optical constants for making bottom antireflective coating (BARC) ...

The effect of resist thickness on depth-of-focus (DOF) is examined. It is seen that for maximum DOF the maximum in-coupling point of the swing curve must be selected whether the substrate is highly reflective bare silicon or one utilising a bottom anti-...

According to the SIA roadmap, semiconductor chip geometries will reach feature sizes of 100 nm in the year 2002. In this process the exposure wavelength for the optical lithography is proposed to be 193 nm and ultimately 157 nm, as emitted by the ArF ...

A new approach to optical proximity correction in VLSI photolithography has been proposed. Instead of changing feature dimension or adding serifs, the mask feature itself has been coded in different grey tone levels at different parts of the feature, ...

The evaluation of electrical performances of ultimate MOSFET requires lithography and etching of poly gate in the 30 nm range while gate oxide thickness is close to 1.2 nm. This paper describes the process developed for etching of these ultra narrow ...