Objective
Steag Hamatech's advanced photomask resist system comprising the coater ASR5000 and the aqueous developer ASP5000 shall be assessed under close to production conditions for 100nm node mask making. Mask manufacturing at this lithographic level needs e-beam pattern generators with a high acceleration voltage and chemically amplified resists. The shorter shelf life of these resists and the manufacturing of alternating Phase Shift Masks requires the in-house coating capability of mask shops. Accordingly, the main items of the evaluation are the coating performance of ASR5000, the process performance of both tools for chemically amplified resists and the reliability of the systems including the Costs of Ownership. The consortium of captive and merchant mask houses, blank and equipment suppliers and a research institute with more than 10 years experience in e-beam lithography guarantees a competent evaluation.
Objectives:
The overall objective of the proposed project is the assessment of Steag Hamatech's advanced photomask resist system consisting of the coater ASP5000 and the aqueous developer ASR5000 under close to production conditions. The tools shall be applied to the manufacture of 100nm node production masks including alternating Phase Shift Masks using an e-beam pattern generator with a high acceleration voltage and chemically amplified resists. In addition coater and developer shall be evaluated for the first production of wafer based Next Generation Lithography masks.
Work description:
The near future mask technology needs substantial changes to meet the requirements for the advanced and Next Generation Lithography (NGL). The high resolution capability in mask making can only be achieved using high energy e-beam writer combined with chemically amplified resists (CAR). The shorter shelf life of CAR and the manufacturing of alternating Phase Shift Masks (PSM) require an in-house coating capability for mask shops. The faithful processing of CAR needs special environmental conditions during coating, exposure and development and finally mask houses have to provide a wafer processing capability in the future for manufacturing of Next Generation Lithography Masks. Steag Hamatech's advanced photomask resist system consisting of the coater ASR5000 and the aqueous developer ASP5000 will be evaluated concurrently with e-beam sensitive CAR when applied to the manufacture of 100nm node production masks including alternating PSM and when applied to the first production of wafer based NGL masks.
The tools and the selected resists will be mainly assessed as follows:
1. Evaluation of coating performance of ASR5000 for different resists by measuring of thickness uniformity, thickness repeatability and defect density.
2. Evaluation of process capability of different CARs for 100nm mask production and influence separation of coater, developer and CARs on key parameters like resolution, line edge roughness, resist profile, CD uniformity and repeatability. Furthermore the assessment includes the production of advanced binary masks, PSM and NGL masks with test and real designs.
3. Enhancement of coating process yield and system performance for high equipment reliability and process integrity.
The assessment will be carried out for a period of 14 months including 1 month tools installation.
Milestones:
Steag Hamatech's coater ASR5000 and developer ASP5000 should be proved for coating and processing of 100nm node production masks using e-beam sensitive chemically amplified resists. In addition the tools are proved for the first production of wafer based NGL masks. Achieved yield, reliability and Cost of Ownership qualify the tools as ready for production.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
ACM - Preparatory, accompanying and support measuresCoordinator
70569 STUTTGART
Germany