Leaching and drying marks on photoresist-coated substrates

In immersion lithography, the probability to leave water on a photoresist (PR) increases with the scan speed. After wet processes, in general, liquid droplets may remain on the substrates. The evaporation of these droplets coupled with the leaching of the PR produces defects. These drying defects may affect the resolution of the subsequent lithographic exposure. Beyond lithography, this interaction droplet-PR is of great interest in ink-jet printing technology. Indeed, contrast and resolution depend on the pattern left after the evaporation of sessile droplets. Here, we analyze the drying speed of a sessile water droplet on a PR substrate with the aim to characterize the resulting drying marks by the dynamics of their formation and by their typical "crater" topography. First, we focus our study on the drying dynamics of an evaporating sessile droplet and its drying patterns left on the PR; second, we show that the contact line motion is the key feature in the generation of surface defects with a strong interaction fluid/surface despite the hydrophobicity. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Leaching and drying marks on photoresist-coated substrates journaltitle: Microelectronic Engineering articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mee.2013.03.114 content_type: article copyright: Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.status: publishe