Study on resist performance of inorganic-organic resist materials for EUV and EB lithography

In this study, some hybrid inorganic-organic resist materials known as metal-oxo clusters were synthesized and their lithographic characteristics were investigated to clarify the difference in sensitivity and resolution among Ti-based, Zr-based and Hf-based oxo clusters by using EUV and EB exposure. Our results indicated that the sensitivity in Hf-based oxo clusters was higher than those of Ti-based and Zr-based oxo clusters in both EB and EUV exposure. Although the exposure dose was not optimized, the patterns of Ti-based, Zr-based, and Hf-based oxo clusters showed a 100, 50, and 32 nm line and space patterns at the dose of 250, 80, and 25 C/cm2, respectively. We clarified that it is very important for the new resist design such as hybrid inorganic-organic resist to increase photo-absorption cross section and density of elements. In particular, the size and homogeneity of particle and film quality is very important for resist performance of hybrid inorganic-organic resist materials. In addition, it is clarified that etch durability increased by annealing metal oxo clusters