High performance 193nm photoresists based on fluorosulfonamide

The combination of immersion lithography and reticle enhancement techniques (RETs) has extended 193nm lithography into the 45nm node and possibly beyond. In order to fulfill the tight pitch and small critical dimension requirements of these future technology nodes, the performance of 193nm resist materials needs to further improve. In this paper, a high performance 193nm photoresist system based on fluorosulfonamide (FSM) is designed and developed. The FSM group has good transparency at 193nm. Compared to the commonly used hexafluoroalcohol (HFA) group, the trifluoromethyl sulfonamide (TFSM) functionality has a lower pKa value and contains less fluorine atoms. Polymers containing the TFSM functionality have exhibited improved dissolution properties and better etch resistance than their HFA counterparts. Resists based on the FSM-containing polymers have shown superior lithographic performance for line, trench and contact hole levels under the 45 nm node exposure conditions. In addition, FSM resists have also demonstrated excellent bright field and dark field compatibility and thereby make it possible to use one resist for both bright field and dark field level applications. The structure, property and lithographic performance of the FSM resist system are reported.