Advanced Spectroscopic Analysis of EUV Photoresists

The continued advancement of photolithography, particularly with the emergence of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology, has enabled device fabrication with critical dimensions below few tens of nanometers. As feature sizes approach atomic scale precision, further progress becomes increasingly challenging from a tool, process, and materials perspective. The interaction between EUV photons and photoresists, for example, is still not fully understood and represents a promising research direction for enabling future device scaling. Fundamental research on EUV photoresists relies heavily on spectroscopic techniques, such as Infrared Spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. However, the complexity of photoresist formulations and the EUV-induced reaction mechanism make data analysis and information extraction highly challenging.

In this project, you will explore the feasibility of two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy (2D-COS) and apply it to infrared (IR) spectroscopy on photoresists and resist proxies exposed at different EUV doses. This advanced analytical technique might allow us to better resolve complex and overlapping spectral features, identify correlation of spectral signals, and reaction sequences. This will lead to a better understanding of the complex EUV exposure mechanism of photoresists and help the semiconductor industry to develop optimized materials necessary to further increase the number of transistors on state-of-the-art integrated circuits.

Responsibilities:

• Prepare photoresist samples coated on silicon wafers for EUV exposure
• Generate an extensive dataset of experimental infrared spectra after EUV exposure and post-exposure baking
• Process and analyze spectroscopic data using two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy (2D-COS)
• Draw conclusions on the exposure mechanism from the experimental data
• Depending on project progress, heterospectral 2D-COS employing a second spectroscopic technique available at imec might be explored

Please send your application to: chien-hsun.yu@imec.be