10-11AM PT,  Jan 28, 2025 Zoom

A more sustainable method to disrupt traditional wafer processing in lithography

Current and future global trends in the Semiconductor Industry require that companies step up their social responsibility and regulatory compliance.  In addition to making good ecological sense and enhancing brand reputation, consumers are demanding eco-friendly practices. Elimination of forever chemicals, such as perfluorinated alkylated is also at the forefront of environmental concerns.  Therefore, environmentally acceptable and sustainable materials and processes are becoming more important in our industry.

A team from Brewer Science, SCREEN and imec are working on a materials-machine-process solutions to lower energy consumption in lithography processes by eliminating the high energy consuming steps inside the lithography track.  More specifically, we aim at eliminating conventional thermal crosslinking approach of spin-on carbon (SOC) and spin-on glass (SOG) layers with a photo-crosslinking process.  While thermal baking process are very effective and have been used as the standard in lithography tracks, they must remain in the “on” state 24/7 in order to maintain thermal stability and high throughput.  By changing the crosslinking mechanism of the spin-on layers to optical crosslinking, similar level of material performance can be achieved with more energy efficiency since optical curing only needs to be accessed on demand. The time required to achieve optical curing is much shorter than for thermal crosslinking.  This time saving translates into an increase in tool throughput.

In this presentation, we will show the feasibility of the proposed approach and materials.  The patterning tests with light-curable underlayers will be compared with traditional thermal crosslinking processes.   We will also share the current status of underlayers towards PFAS free targets.