Organic materials development for advanced lithographic applications

textThe microelectronics industry strives for continued reduction in feature sizes to allow increased computing speed and power. This calls for continuous development of new materials. During the shift to 157 nm photolithography, it was discovered that fluorinated materials were necessary to provide sufficient transparency. Material design and synthesis to incorporate fluorine bearing norbornane based materials through an alternate means of polymerization to those used in traditional lithographic materials will be presented. Step and Flash Imprint Lithography represents a low cost alternative to optical lithography for production of nanoscale features. Sub-20 nm features have been produced using commercial tools however the contact between the imprint template and resist formulation leaves the template prone to fouling. A new imprint resist designed to facilitate wafer reworking and template cleaning is presented. The small amount of power available from deep ultraviolet light sources necessitates the use of systems that behave in a catalytic manner that is referred to as gain. The use of small molecules for gain necessitates a reliance on diffusion through the resist film and results in image bias. A polymeric material that undergoes depropagation catalyzed by a single photochemical event and causes a solubility change due to this event represents a system that possesses gain while removing diffusion bias. Progress towards such a system is presented.Chemistry and Biochemistr