High temperature baking treatment is a method to remove chemical residue on mask before shipping to wafer fab. When developing advanced mask technology, we need to make sure the bake treatment have no side-effect to mask quality. In this investigation, some test has been devised to study the relation between baking process and mask registration, CD movement, repaired point, ion residue and cleaning performance. We also studied how to setup a stable and efficient bake process to make the mask making flow reasonable. The high temperature bake processes was tuned by different temperature, treatment loops setting and was put at different process position to verify the performance. In this paper, OMOG and EAPSM masks were chosen to test by different process condition.
In the advanced technology photomask manufacturing industry, it is challenging to produce defect-free photomasks, especially for the increasingly smaller critical dimension current days . Since the 193nm immersion scanner numerical aperture (1.35) has remained the same as in previous nodes, more mult i-patterning and aggressive source mask optimizat ion illumination sources are being used to print smaller feature crit ical dimensions (CDs) and pitches. To accommodate such specialized sources, more model -based mask OPC and ILT are being used, making mask designs very complicated. This in turn makes mask manufacturing very challenging , especially for the defect inspection, repair, and metrology processes that are used to guarantee defect-free masks. So, it is necessary to develop an application for handling mask defects. In this paper, we introduce a new application called LPR (Lithography Printability Review) to verify any outlier defects or repairs before the mask ships to the wafer fab. The paper details how LPR works in the mask-making flow and how the LPR module is set up. This application has been tightly integrated with KLA’s server and inspectors. The paper concludes with showing the benefits realized in mask making cycle time as a result of implementing LPR into a high volume advanced photomask production line.
OMOG (opaque MoSi on glass) blank is widely used in advanced masks because of its advantage in high resolution and 3D effect1-2. And the manufacture flow is simple compared to phase shift mask. But the repair of this type mask is a challenge. The OMOG material is sensitive to the etching gas thus the etching rate is much higher than PSM. This article presents a problem, the poor edge roughness after repair in OMOG mask, is also related to the high etching rate. The CD (critical dimension) of advanced masks is very small. If there is some distortion in the features’ edge, the AIMS result is easy out of spec. The poor edge roughness we met usually gets poor AIMS result. To find the reason, we checked the manufacture flow and then focused on three steps: repair process, plasma treated process and short clean. Finally we found the plasma treated process was the main reason, and the clean process also contributed to it. Plasma process makes the mask surface oxidization and the oxide layer is high clean durability. The etching rate of oxide is slower than pure OMOG material, and the oxide layer’s uniformity is not good. The two characteristics lead to different etching ratio in the defect area. This is the reason of the poor edge roughness. If the oxide layer is uniform in the defect area, the problem won’t happen. That’s why not all the masks we repaired met the problem. We also found the removal of the oxide layer by clean process could solve this problem. This is an indirect evidence for explaining the reason.
As semiconductor devices become extremely integrated and their geometry continues to shrink, even slight critical dimension (CD) move or phase decay during photomask cleaning may have a negative impact on the CD uniformity performance of photomask. In addition, the printing of sub-resolution assist-features (SRAF) on photomask becomes the main limiting factor in using high power and low frequency Mega-sonic cleaning process, therefore, the balance between SRAF damage and clean performance becomes extremely important. In this research, the CD movement both on Chrome layer and MoSi layer and the phase and transmission decay on MoSi layer of advanced PSM photomask induced by Tetra-Methyl-Ammonium-Hydroxide (TMAH) based cleaning process were studied. Meanwhile, the difference between TMAH and SC1 were emphasized. The results showed that TMAH has significant advantage in CD move and phase decay. We also researched the SRAF damage condition after cleaning by the chemical of TMAH with Multi-Beam and Multi-Frequency (MBMF) mode. In addition, we collected different kinds of particles to study the particle remove capability of TMAH under MBMF mode.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.