Resistless EUV lithography: Photon-induced oxide patterning on silicon.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37075116.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/sciadv.adf5997 and PMC identifier 10115406.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
In this work, we show the feasibility of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) patterning on an HF-treated silicon (100) surface in the absence of a photoresist. EUV lithography is the leading lithography technique in semiconductor manufacturing due to its high resolution and throughput, but future progress in resolution can be hampered because of the inherent limitations of the resists. We show that EUV photons can induce surface reactions on a partially hydrogen-terminated silicon surface and assist the growth of an oxide layer, which serves as an etch mask. This mechanism is different from the hydrogen desorption in scanning tunneling microscopy-based lithography. We achieve silicon dioxide/silicon gratings with 75-nanometer half-pitch and 31-nanometer height, demonstrating the efficacy of the method and the feasibility of patterning with EUV lithography without the use of a photoresist. Further development of the resistless EUV lithography method can be a viable approach to nanometer-scale lithography by overcoming the inherent resolution and roughness limitations of photoresist materials.