Study of acicular defects in the post-exposure bake process airborne molecular contamination

As technical advances continue, the pattern size of semiconductor circuits has shrunk. Defect control becomes tighter due to a decrease in defect size, which affects the image printed on the wafer. It is critical to the photomask, which contained a considerably shrunk circuit and an ultra-high-density pattern. In this paper, we introduce a study of acicular defects in Post-Exposure Bake (PEB) process Airborne Molecular Contamination (AMC). Environment AMC impact masks before and during the PEB process generate a unique defect we call an acicular defect. Based on the experiment results, we will apply different Chemically Amplified Resist (CAR) to different contaminated conditions, which produce varied phenomena including shape and distribution. An appropriate solution to mitigate defects caused by AMC of the PEB process will be proposed.