Optical lithography for nanotechnology

Donis G. Flagello; Bill Arnold

doi:10.1117/12.683305

31 August 2006 Optical lithography for nanotechnology

Donis G. Flagello, Bill Arnold

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Proceedings Volume 6327, Nanoengineering: Fabrication, Properties, Optics, and Devices III; 63270D (2006) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.683305
Event: SPIE Optics + Photonics, 2006, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Optical lithography is continually evolving to meet the ever demanding requirements of the micro - and nano- technology communities. Since the optical exposure systems used in lithography are some of the most advanced and complex optical instruments ever built, they involve ever more complex illuminator designs, nearly aberration free lenses, and hyper numerical apertures approaching unity and beyond. Fortunately, the lithography community has risen to the challenge by devising many inventive optical systems and various methods to use and optimize exposure systems. The recent advancement of water immersion technology into lithography for 193nm wavelengths has allowed the numerical aperture (NA) of lithographic lenses to exceed 1.0 or a hyper-NA region. This allows resolution limits to extend to the 45nm node and beyond with NA>1.3. At these extreme NAs, the imaging within the photoresist is accomplished by not only using water immersion but also using polarized light lithography. This paper will review the current state-of-the-art in immersion, hyper-NA lithography. We show the latest results and discuss the various phenomena that may arise using these systems. Furthermore, we show some of the advanced image optimization techniques that allow lithographic printing at the physical limits of resolution. In addition, we show that the future of optical lithography is likely to go well beyond the 30nm regime using advancements in 193nm double-patterning technology and/or the use of extreme ultra-violet (EUV) optical systems.

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Donis G. Flagello and Bill Arnold "Optical lithography for nanotechnology", Proc. SPIE 6327, Nanoengineering: Fabrication, Properties, Optics, and Devices III, 63270D (31 August 2006); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.683305

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