High throughput with high resolution imaging has been key to the development of leading-edge microlithography. However, management of thermal aberrations due to lens heating during exposure has become critical for simultaneous achievement of high throughput and high resolution. Thermal aberrations cause CD drift and overlay error, and these errors lead directly to edge placement errors (EPE). Management and control of high order thermal aberrations is a critical requirement. In this paper, we will show practical performance of the lens heating with dipole and other typical illumination conditions for finer patterning. We confirm that our new control system can reduce the high-order aberrations and enable critical-dimension uniformity CDU during the exposure.
Accurate overlay with high throughput is the key to success in multiple-patterning lithography. To achieve accurate overlay, the imaging system must control and minimize the thermal aberration and distortion. There are several sources of thermal aberration in an immersion lithography system: (1) reticle deformation by reticle heating; (2) air temperature fluctuation near the reticle; (3) thermal aberrations from the projection lens; and (4) immersion water temperature fluctuation. All aberrations and distortion are impacted by these sources and need to be minimized for accurate overlay. In this paper, we introduce our approach and technologies for the control of thermal aberrations.
In order to realize further improvement of productivity of semiconductor manufacturing, higher throughput and better
imaging performance are required for the exposure tool. Therefore, aberration control of the projection lens is becoming
more and more important not only for cool status performance but also heating status. In this paper, we show the
improvements of cool status lens aberration, including scalar wavefront performance and polarization aberration
performance. We also discuss various techniques for controlling thermal aberrations including reduction of heat in the
lens, simulation, compensating knob, and adjusting method with actual imaging performance data during heating and
cooling.
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