Background: The chemically amplified resist (CAR) has been the workhorse of lithography for the past few decades. During the evolution of projection lithography to extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL), a continuous reduction in feature size is observed. Also, a reduction in resist film thickness (FT) is required to prevent large aspect ratios that lead to pattern collapse. A further reduction in resist FT, into an ultrathin film regime (<30  nm resist FT), is expected when advancing to high NA EUVL. This brings along associated challenges with (1) resist critical dimension scanning electron microscope (CDSEM) metrology and (2) resist patterning performance.

Aim: Assessment of metrology challenges and patterning limits of a CAR working in this ultrathin film regime. Deconvoluting the metrology and patterning effect on the determination of the unbiased line width roughness (uLWR).

Approach: Patterning a CAR at different nominal resist FTs on two different underlayers to quantify the changes in CDSEM image quality and resist patterning performance with the resulting uLWR changes.

Results: The CDSEM image signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) depends on resist FT and the underlayer. The uLWR increases with a reduction in resist FT but scales differently on the two underlayers.

Conclusions: A relationship between CDSEM image SNR and uLWR is found. The SNR and uLWR scaling difference on the two underlayers, as well as the uLWR dependency on SNR was determined to be a metrology effect. The general uLWR increase for a reduced resist FT was determined to be a patterning effect.