ECE 734 Homework 2

Due: 4pm, Thursday, 2/17/2011

Note: please turn in your homework to Prof. Lu’s mailbox at the ECE main
office (205 Dreese). Ask the front desk to stamp the turn-in time.

1. The depth of focus (DOF) for an optical projection lithographic tool becomes a
problem as the numerical aperture (NA) of the lens increases. It is desired to print
uniform 0.5 µm-wide metal lines on a processed silicon wafer using two different
optical lithographic tools with i) 0.20 and ii) 0.45 NA projection lens system and
the i-line radiation. If there are etched structures in the 0.5 µm-thick SiO2 on the
wafer, can the desired lines be reproduced faithfully across the wafer? If not.
Prescribe a process to overcome the problem.

2. In an optical proximity printing system, briefly discuss how resolution can change
with resist thickness. For an exposure, the mask to wafer separation is 10 µm and
g-line exposure is used, what is the variation in resolution when a process using a
0.5 µm-thick resist is changed to one using 2.5 µm-thick resist?

3. A new photoresist is being developed for use in a KrF stepper. If the stepper has
NA = 0.6 and a spatial coherence of 0.5, what is the minimum feather size when γ
= 3.0? If the resist has γ = 4.0, what will the minimum feature size be?

4. For a given radiation, the absorption coefficient of a resist material is 104/cm.

Assume that the absorption is uniform, find the resist thickness required to absorb
90% of the irradiation energy.