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We have found that besides a Ta absorber thickness reduction an illumination pupil optimization is necessary to fully remove these CD asymmetries. The pupil optimization is achieved by relating the aerial image decomposition (here: symmetrization and balancing of intensities across the diffracted orders) with lithographic metrics per pupil plane location. The resulting pupil allows us (i) to lift the focus-dependent CD asymmetries and (ii) to co-optimize a number of lithographic metrics such as overlapping process window, contrast, non-telecentricity and pattern shift. The importance of subsidiary conditions (e.g. symmetry of the pupil, required DOF) will be discussed.
In the first part this complementary approach is applied to find an optimum thickness of a typical Ta-based absorber for imaging horizontal spaces through pitch. And although an absorber thickness of around 70 nm is found to be preferable for this particular application, the thickness choice leads to conflicting results for the general printability of 10 nm technology node features. Hence we show that a moderate reduction of the absorber thickness can be allowed when the mask bias of these features is optimized appropriately. The moderate thickness reduction already allows for the mitigation of some of the conflicting imaging aspects.
In the second part we expand the workflow by analyzing phase aberrations in n & k material space. This phase-based optical property screening shows that an alternative absorber based on materials such as Ni with k higher than Ta show superior best focus and contrast metrics. These alternative absorber embodiments would allow the overall reduction of M3D effects and adverse application dependencies of current Ta-based absorbers due to a combination of thickness reduction and enhancement of absorption.
This is important for imaging at the edges of an image field when fields are printed very close to each other on the wafer (so-called butted fields, with zero field to field spacing). DUV light is reflected from the reticle black border (BB) into a neighboring exposure field on the wafer. This results in a CD change at the edges and in the corners of the fields and therefore has an impact on CD uniformity. Experimental CDU results are shown for 16 nm dense lines (DL) and 20 nm isolated spaces (IS) (N7 logic design features) in the fields exposed at 0 mm and 0.5mm distance on the wafer. Areas close to the edge of the image field are important for customer applications as they often contain qualification and monitoring structures; in addition, limited imaging capabilities in this area may result in loss of usable wafer space.
In order to understand and control OOB DUV light, it must be measured in the scanner. DUV measurements are performed in resist using a special OOB reticle coated with Aluminum (Al) having low EUV reflectance and high DUV reflectance. A model for DUV light impact on the imaging is proposed and verified. For this, DUV reflectance data is collected in the wavelengths range 100-400 nm for Al and BB and the ratio of reflectances of these materials is determined for assumed scanner and resist OOB spectra. Also direct BB OOB test is performed on the wafer and compared to Al OOB results. The sensitivity of 16 nm DL and 20 nm IS to OOB light is experimentally determined by means of double exposure test: a wafer with exposed imaging structures undergoes a second flood exposure from a DUV reflective material (Al or BB).
Finally, several OOB mitigation strategies are discussed, in particular, suppression of DUV light in the scanner (~3x improvement), recent successes of DUV suppression for 16 nm imaging resist (~1.8x improvement) and DUV reflectance mitigation in the reticle black border (~3.8x). An overview of OOB test results for multiple NXE systems will be shown including systems with new NXE:3350 optics with improved OOB suppression.
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