Date of Award

1-1-2010

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Nanoscale Science and Engineering

Program

Nanoscale Engineering

Content Description

1 online resource (xxv, 166 pages) : illustrations (some color)

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

John G Hartley

Committee Members

John G Hartley, Gregory P Denbeaux, Ernest N Levine, Obert R Wood, Chiew-seng Koay

Keywords

EUV, Flatness, Image Placement, Lithography, Overlay, Reticle, Extreme ultraviolet lithography, Nanostructured materials, Image registration

Subject Categories

Electrical and Electronics | Nanoscience and Nanotechnology | Systems Science

Abstract

As the semiconductor industry continues scaling devices to smaller sizes, the need for next generation lithography technology for fabricating these small structures has always been at the forefront. Over the past few years, conventional optical lithography technology which has adopted a series of resolution enhancement techniques to support the scaling needs is expected to run out of steam in the near future. Extreme Ultra Violet lithography (EUVL) is being actively pursued by the semiconductor industry as one of the most promising next generation lithographic technologies. Most of the issues unique to EUVL arise from the use of 13.5 nm light for imaging. Since most material systems are absorbing at that wavelength, the entire optical train in a EUVL tool is reflective. Due to the use of reflective optics, reticle illumination is non-telecentric leading to change in feature size from shadowing, image placement errors from reticle non-flatness, etc. All of these challenges and problems need to be overcome for the technology to come into use in production. In this work, Image Placement Errors (IPE) arising from reticle non-flatness has been studied.

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