Manufacturing at the 7nm node and beyond enabled by novel resist technology

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The modern world is dependent on electronic devices such as mobile phones and laptop computers and tablets. The computing power of such devices has increased exponentially because the electronics industry has been able to reduce the size of components by a factor of two every two years since the late 1950s. In the near future the key components - field-effect transistors (FETs) - will be at the 7 nm node and later they will be still smaller. The electronics industry is introducing extreme UV lithography to write such nanoscale FETS. This produces multiple challenges that are addressed in this proposal. A key factor in manufacturing FETs is the resist material into which the pattern is written before it is transferred into silicon. We have developed a new family of resist materials which give excellent resolution, and that are world leading in their aspect ratios (i.e. how high a feature can be against its width) and line edge roughness. They have unique etch performance which enables us to write thin deep structures into silicon and into other materials. Here we will exploit the unique characteristics to make key structures that will be used in future electronic devices. These include: masks through which extreme UV radiation will be used to write devices using lithography; heat sinks which are needed to dissipate heat generated by very tall thin FETs; improved electron emitters to increase the brightness of electron-beam writes. We will further engineer our resists to increase sensitivity and meet future industry targets for write speed while maintaining high resolution structures. A world leading team of chemists, physicists, engineers and material scientists has been assembled and the outcome will be multiple breakthroughs that will enable manufacturing at the 7 nm node and beyond.