A study of the reproducibility of electron beam induced deposition for sub-20 nm lithography

The potential of Electron Beam Induced Deposition (EBID) to become a reliable and reproducible direct-write nanopatterning technique has been investigated. A key requirement is that patterns of sub-20 nm dimension can be reproducibly fabricated and measured. EBID was used for the controlled fabrication of sub-20 nm dense lines on bulk silicon. To study the reproducibility of the fabrication process, a method for the quantitative measurement of line widths was developed. The line width of sub-20 nm EBID lines has been determined to be reproducible to within 1 nm. The parameters of importance and the challenges in achieving reproducibility, for performing EBID in standard SEM's, are discussed.