Issue 1, 2024

Highly hydroxylated hafnium clusters are accessible to high resolution EUV photoresists under small energy doses

Abstract

This work reports the success in accessing high-resolution negative-tone EUV photoresists without radical chain growth in the aggregation mechanism. The synthesis of a highly hydroxylated Hf6O4(OH)8(RCO2)8 cluster 3 (R = s-butyl or s-Bu) is described; its EUV performance enables high resolution patterns HP = 18 nm under only 30 mJ cm−2. This photoresist also achieves high resolution patterns for e-beam lithography. Our new photoresist design to increase hydroxide substitutions of carboxylate ligands in the Hf6O4(OH)4(RCO2)12 clusters improves the EUV resolution and also greatly reduces EUV doses. Mechanistic analysis indicates that EUV light not only enables photolytic decomposition of carboxylate ligands, but also enhances the Hf-OH dehydration. One additional advantage of cluster 3 is a very small loss of film thickness (ca. 13%) after the EUV pattern development.

Graphical abstract: Highly hydroxylated hafnium clusters are accessible to high resolution EUV photoresists under small energy doses

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
11 jul 2023
Accepted
09 nov 2023
First published
10 nov 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Nanoscale Adv., 2024,6, 197-208

Highly hydroxylated hafnium clusters are accessible to high resolution EUV photoresists under small energy doses

Y. Tseng, P. Liao, P. Chen, T. Gau, B. Lin, P. Chiu and J. Liu, Nanoscale Adv., 2024, 6, 197 DOI: 10.1039/D3NA00508A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements