The objective of this work is to describe the advances in the use of C-Quad polarized illumination for densest pitches in back end of line thin wire in 32m technology and outlook for 28 nm technology with NA of 1.35 on a 193nm wavelength scanner. Through simulation and experiments, we found that moving from Annular to C-Quad illumination provides improvement in intensity and contrast. We studied the patterning performance of C-Quad illumination for 1D dense, semi dense, isolated features with and without polarization. Polarization shows great improvement in contrast and line edge roughness for dense pattern. Patterning performance of isolated and semi-isolated features was the same with and without polarization.

Date Published: 16 March 2009
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 7274, Optical Microlithography XXII, 72742Y (16 March 2009);

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7274:
Optical Microlithography XXII
Harry J. Levinson; Mircea V. Dusa, Editor(s)