Pattern degradation with larger particles on EUV pellicle

Abstract

Particle defects placed on extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) pellicle can degrade pattern quality due to the particle defect shadowing. It is obvious that serious patterning error would be occurred due to larger particle defects on top of the pellicle, so that the effect of critical dimension (CD) degradation caused by particle defect on top of the EUV pellicle is investigated. We tried to determine the maximum allowable particle defect size with various pattern types and nodes via commercial simulation tool. Also, we set the boundaries for CD error limit of 5 % and CD non-uniformity to 0.2 nm. Based on these result, we determined the maximum allowable particle defect size for N5 and N7 nodes in order to find the proper defect control. Copyright © 2018 SPIE.