Electron beam lithography
Encyclopedia
Electron beam lithography (often abbreviated as e-beam lithography) is the practice of emitting a beam of electron
Electron
The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton...

s in a patterned fashion across a surface covered with a film (called the resist
Resist
In semiconductor fabrication, a resist is a thin layer used to transfer a circuit pattern to the semiconductor substrate which it is deposited upon. A resist can be patterned via lithography to form a micrometer-scale, temporary mask that protects selected areas of the underlying substrate during...

), ("exposing" the resist) and of selectively removing either exposed or non-exposed regions of the resist ("developing"). The purpose, as with photolithography
Photolithography
Photolithography is a process used in microfabrication to selectively remove parts of a thin film or the bulk of a substrate. It uses light to transfer a geometric pattern from a photomask to a light-sensitive chemical "photoresist", or simply "resist," on the substrate...

, is to create very small structures in the resist that can subsequently be transferred to the substrate material, often by etching. It was developed for manufacturing integrated circuit
Integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...

s, and is also used for creating nanotechnology
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...

 architectures.

The primary advantage of electron beam lithography is that it is one of the ways to beat the diffraction limit of light and make features in the nanometer regime. This form of maskless lithography
Maskless lithography
In maskless lithography, the radiation that is used to expose a photosensitive emulsion is not projected from, or transmitted through, a photomask. Instead, most commonly, the radiation is focused to a narrow beam. The beam is then used to directly write the image into the photoresist, one or more...

 has found wide usage in photomask
Photomask
A photomask is an opaque plate with holes or transparencies that allow light to shine through in a defined pattern. They are commonly used in photolithography.-Overview:...

-making used in photolithography
Photolithography
Photolithography is a process used in microfabrication to selectively remove parts of a thin film or the bulk of a substrate. It uses light to transfer a geometric pattern from a photomask to a light-sensitive chemical "photoresist", or simply "resist," on the substrate...

, low-volume production of semiconductor components, and research & development.

The key limitation of electron beam lithography is throughput, i.e., the very long time it takes to expose an entire silicon wafer or glass substrate. A long exposure time leaves the user vulnerable to beam drift or instability which may occur during the exposure. Also, the turn-around time for reworking or re-design is lengthened unnecessarily if the pattern is not being changed the second time.

Electron beam lithography systems

Electron beam lithography systems used in commercial applications are dedicated e-beam writing systems that are very expensive (>$4M USD). For research applications, it is very common to convert an electron microscope
Electron microscope
An electron microscope is a type of microscope that uses a beam of electrons to illuminate the specimen and produce a magnified image. Electron microscopes have a greater resolving power than a light-powered optical microscope, because electrons have wavelengths about 100,000 times shorter than...

 into an electron beam lithography system using a relatively low cost accessory (
Electron beam lithography systems can be classified according to both beam shape and beam deflection strategy. Older systems used Gaussian-shaped beams and scanned these beams in a raster fashion. Newer systems use shaped beams, which may be deflected to various positions in the writing field (this is also known as vector scan).

Electron sources

Lower resolution systems can use thermionic
Thermionic emission
Thermionic emission is the heat-induced flow of charge carriers from a surface or over a potential-energy barrier. This occurs because the thermal energy given to the carrier overcomes the binding potential, also known as work function of the metal. The charge carriers can be electrons or ions, and...

 sources, which are usually formed from LaB6. However, systems with higher resolution requirements need to use field electron emission sources, such as heated W/ZrO2 for lower energy spread and enhanced brightness. Thermal field emission sources are preferred over cold emission sources, in spite of the former's slightly larger beam size, because they offer better stability over typical writing times of several hours.

Lenses

Both electrostatic and magnetic lenses may be used. However, electrostatic lenses have more aberrations and so are not used for fine focusing. There is no current mechanism to make achromatic electron beam lenses, so extremely narrow dispersions of the electron beam energy are needed for finest focusing.

Stage, stitching and alignment

Typically, for very small beam deflections electrostatic deflection 'lenses' are used, larger beam deflections require electromagnetic scanning. Because of the inaccuracy and because of the finite number of steps in the exposure grid the writing field is of the order of 100 micrometre – 1 mm. Larger patterns require stage moves. An accurate stage is critical for stitching (tiling writing fields exactly against each other) and pattern overlay (aligning a pattern to a previously made one).

Electron beam write time

The minimum time to expose a given area for a given dose is given by the following formula:

where is the time to expose the object (can be divided into exposure time/step size), is the beam current, is the dose and is the area exposed.

For example, assuming an exposure area of 1 cm2, a dose of 10−3 Coulombs/cm2, and a beam current of 10−9 Amperes, the resulting minimum write time would be 106 seconds (about 12 days). This minimum write time does not include time for the stage to move back and forth, as well as time for the beam to be blanked (blocked from the wafer during deflection), as well as time for other possible beam corrections and adjustments in the middle of writing. To cover the 700 cm2 surface area of a 300 mm silicon wafer, the minimum write time would extend to 7*108 seconds, about 22 years. This is a factor of about 10 million times slower than current optical lithography tools. It is clear that throughput is a serious limitation for electron beam lithography, especially when writing dense patterns over a large area.

E-beam lithography is not suitable for high-volume manufacturing because of its limited throughput. The smaller field of electron beam writing makes for very slow pattern generation compared with photolithography (the current standard) because more exposure fields must be scanned to form the final pattern area (≤mm2 for electron beam vs. ≥40 mm2 for an optical mask projection scanner). The stage moves in between field scans. The electron beam field is small enough that a rastering or serpentine stage motion is needed to pattern a 26 mm X 33 mm area for example, whereas in a photolithography scanner only a one-dimensional motion of a 26 mm X 2 mm slit field would be required.

Currently an optical maskless lithography
Maskless lithography
In maskless lithography, the radiation that is used to expose a photosensitive emulsion is not projected from, or transmitted through, a photomask. Instead, most commonly, the radiation is focused to a narrow beam. The beam is then used to directly write the image into the photoresist, one or more...

 tool is much faster than an electron beam tool used at the same resolution for photomask patterning.

Defects in electron-beam lithography

Despite the high resolution of electron-beam lithography, the generation of defects during electron-beam lithography is often not considered by users. Defects may be classified into two categories: data-related defects, and physical defects.

Data-related defects may be classified further into two sub-categories. Blanking or deflection errors occur when the electron beam is not deflected properly when it is supposed to, while shaping errors occur in variable-shaped beam systems when the wrong shape is projected onto the sample. These errors can originate either from the electron optical control hardware or the input data that was taped out. As might be expected, larger data files are more susceptible to data-related defects.

Physical defects are more varied, and can include sample charging (either negative or positive), backscattering calculation errors, dose errors, fogging (long-range reflection of backscattered electrons), outgassing, contamination, beam drift and particles. Since the write time for electron beam lithography can easily exceed a day, "randomly occurring" defects are more likely to occur. Here again, larger data files can present more opportunities for defects.

Photomask defects largely originate during the electron beam lithography used for pattern definition.

Electron energy deposition in matter

The primary electrons in the incident beam lose energy upon entering a material through inelastic scattering
Inelastic scattering
In particle physics and chemistry, inelastic scattering is a fundamental scattering process in which the kinetic energy of an incident particle is not conserved . In an inelastic scattering process, some of the energy of the incident particle is lost or gained...

 or collisions with other electrons. In such a collision the momentum transfer from the incident electron to an atomic electron can be expressed as , where b is the distance of closest approach between the electrons, and v is the incident electron velocity. The energy transferred by the collision is given by , where m is the electron mass and E is the incident electron energy, given by . By integrating over all values of T between the lowest binding energy, E0 and the incident energy, one obtains the result that the total cross section
Cross section (physics)
A cross section is the effective area which governs the probability of some scattering or absorption event. Together with particle density and path length, it can be used to predict the total scattering probability via the Beer-Lambert law....

 for collision is inversely proportional to the incident energy , and proportional to 1/E0 – 1/E. Generally, E >> E0, so the result is essentially inversely proportional to the binding energy.

By using the same integration approach, but over the range 2E0 to E, one obtains by comparing cross-sections that half of the inelastic collisions of the incident electrons produce electrons with kinetic energy greater than E0. These secondary electrons
Secondary electrons
Secondary electrons are electrons generated as ionization products. They are called 'secondary' because they are generated by other radiation . This radiation can be in the form of ions, electrons, or photons with sufficiently high energy, i.e. exceeding the ionization potential...

 are capable of breaking bonds (with binding energy E0) at some distance away from the original collision. Additionally, they can generate additional, lower energy electrons, resulting in an electron cascade
Electron avalanche
An electron avalanche is a process in which a number of free electrons in a medium are subjected to strong acceleration by an electric field, ionizing the medium's atoms by collision , thereby forming "new" electrons to undergo the same process in successive cycles...

. Hence, it is important to recognize the significant contribution of secondary electrons to the spread of the energy deposition.

In general, for a molecule AB:
e + AB → AB → A + B


This reaction, also known as "electron attachment" or "dissociative electron attachment" is most likely to occur after the electron has essentially slowed to a halt, since it is easiest to capture at that point. The cross-section for electron attachment is inversely proportional to electron energy at high energies, but approaches a maximum limiting value at zero energy. On the other hand, it is already known that the mean free path at the lowest energies (few to several eV or less, where dissociative attachment is significant) is well over 10 nm, thus limiting the ability to consistently achieve resolution at this scale.

Resolution capability

With today's electron optics, electron beam widths can routinely go down to a few nm. This is limited mainly by aberration
Aberration
An aberration is something that deviates from the normal way.Aberration may refer to:In optics and physics:*Optical aberration, an imperfection in image formation by an optical system...

s and space charge
Space charge
Space charge is a concept in which excess electric charge is treated as a continuum of charge distributed over a region of space rather than distinct point-like charges...

. However, the feature resolution limit is determined not by the beam size but by forward scattering (or effective beam broadening) in the photoresist
Photoresist
A photoresist is a light-sensitive material used in several industrial processes, such as photolithography and photoengraving to form a patterned coating on a surface.-Tone:Photoresists are classified into two groups: positive resists and negative resists....

 while the pitch resolution limit is determined by secondary electron
Secondary electrons
Secondary electrons are electrons generated as ionization products. They are called 'secondary' because they are generated by other radiation . This radiation can be in the form of ions, electrons, or photons with sufficiently high energy, i.e. exceeding the ionization potential...

 travel in the photoresist
Photoresist
A photoresist is a light-sensitive material used in several industrial processes, such as photolithography and photoengraving to form a patterned coating on a surface.-Tone:Photoresists are classified into two groups: positive resists and negative resists....

. This point is driven home by the 2007 demonstration of double patterning using electron beam lithography in the fabrication of 15 nm half-pitch zone plates. Although a 15 nm feature was resolved, a 30 nm pitch was still difficult to do, due to secondary electrons scattering from the adjacent feature. The use of double patterning allowed the spacing between features to be wide enough for the secondary electron scattering to be significantly reduced. The forward scattering can be decreased by using higher energy electrons or thinner photoresist, but the generation of secondary electrons
Secondary electrons
Secondary electrons are electrons generated as ionization products. They are called 'secondary' because they are generated by other radiation . This radiation can be in the form of ions, electrons, or photons with sufficiently high energy, i.e. exceeding the ionization potential...

 is inevitable. It is now recognized that for insulating materials like PMMA, low energy electrons can travel quite a far distance (several nm is possible). This is due to the fact that below the ionization potential
Ionization potential
The ionization energy of a chemical species, i.e. an atom or molecule, is the energy required to remove an electron from the species to a practically infinite distance. Large atoms or molecules have a low ionization energy, while small molecules tend to have higher ionization energies.The property...

 the only energy loss mechanism is mainly through phonons and polaron
Polaron
A polaron is a quasiparticle composed of a charge and its accompanying polarization field. A slow moving electron in a dielectric crystal, interacting with lattice ions through long-range forces will permanently be surrounded by a region of lattice polarization and deformation caused by the moving...

s, although the latter is basically an ionic lattice effect. Polaron hopping could extend as far as 20 nm. The travel distance of secondary electrons
Secondary electrons
Secondary electrons are electrons generated as ionization products. They are called 'secondary' because they are generated by other radiation . This radiation can be in the form of ions, electrons, or photons with sufficiently high energy, i.e. exceeding the ionization potential...

 is not a fundamentally derived physical value, but a statistical parameter often determined from many experiments or Monte Carlo simulations down to < 1 eV. This is necessary since the energy distribution of secondary electrons peaks well below 10 eV. Hence, the resolution limit is not usually cited as a well-fixed number as with an optical diffraction-limited system. Repeatability and control at the practical resolution limit often require considerations not related to image formation, e.g., photoresist development and intermolecular forces.

Scattering

In addition to producing secondary electrons, primary electrons from the incident beam with sufficient energy to penetrate the photoresist can be multiply scattered over large distances from underlying films and/or the substrate. This leads to exposure of areas at a significant distance from the desired exposure location. For thicker electrons, as the primary electrons move forward, they have an increasing opportunity to scatter laterally from the beam-defined location. This scattering is called forward scattering. Sometimes the primary electrons are scattered at angles exceeding 90 degrees, i.e., they no longer advance further into the resist. These electrons are called backscattered electrons and have the same effect as long-range flare
Lens flare
Lens flare is the light scattered in lens systems through generally unwanted image formation mechanisms, such as internal reflection and scattering from material inhomogeneities in the lens. These mechanisms differ from the intended image formation mechanism that depends on refraction of the image...

 in optical projection systems. A large enough dose of backscattered electrons can lead to complete exposure of resist over an area much larger than defined by the beam spot.

Proximity effect

The smallest features produced by electron beam lithography have generally been isolated features, as nested features exacerbate the proximity effect
Proximity effect (electron beam lithography)
The proximity effect in electron beam lithography is the phenomenon that the exposure dose distribution, and hence the developed pattern, is wider than the scanned pattern, due to the interactions of the primary beam electrons with the resist and substrate...

, whereby electrons from exposure of an adjacent region spill over into the exposure of the currently written feature, effectively enlarging its image, and reducing its contrast, i.e., difference between maximum and minimum intensity. Hence, nested feature resolution is harder to control. For most resists, it is difficult to go below 25 nm lines and spaces, and a limit of 20 nm lines and spaces has been found. In actuality, though, the range of secondary electron scattering is quite far, sometimes exceeding 100 nm, but becoming very significant below 30 nm.

The proximity effect is also manifest by secondary electrons leaving the top surface of the resist and then returning some tens of nanometers distance away.

Proximity effects (due to electron scattering) can be addressed by solving the inverse problem
Inverse problem
An inverse problem is a general framework that is used to convert observed measurements into information about a physical object or system that we are interested in...

 and calculating the exposure function E(x,y) that leads to a dose distribution as close as possible to the desired dose D(x,y) when convolved
Convolution
In mathematics and, in particular, functional analysis, convolution is a mathematical operation on two functions f and g, producing a third function that is typically viewed as a modified version of one of the original functions. Convolution is similar to cross-correlation...

 by the scattering distribution point spread function
Point spread function
The point spread function describes the response of an imaging system to a point source or point object. A more general term for the PSF is a system's impulse response, the PSF being the impulse response of a focused optical system. The PSF in many contexts can be thought of as the extended blob...

 PSF(x,y). However, it must be remembered that an error in the applied dose (e.g., from shot noise) would cause the proximity effect correction to fail.

Charging

Since electrons are charged particles, they tend to charge the substrate negatively unless they can quickly gain access to a path to ground. For a high-energy beam incident on a silicon wafer, virtually all the electrons stop in the wafer where they can follow a path to ground. However, for a quartz substrate such as a photomask
Photomask
A photomask is an opaque plate with holes or transparencies that allow light to shine through in a defined pattern. They are commonly used in photolithography.-Overview:...

, the embedded electrons will take a much longer time to move to ground. Often the negative charge acquired by a substrate can be compensated or even exceeded by a positive charge on the surface due to secondary electron emission into the vacuum. The presence of a thin conducting layer above or below the resist is generally of limited use for high energy (50 keV or more) electron beams, since most electrons pass through the layer into the substrate. The charge dissipation layer is generally useful only around or below 10 keV, since the resist is thinner and most of the electrons either stop in the resist or close to the conducting layer. However, they are of limited use due to their high sheet resistance, which can lead to ineffective grounding.

The range of low-energy secondary electrons (the largest component of the free electron population in the resist-substrate system) which can contribute to charging is not a fixed number but can vary from 0 to as high as 50 nm (see section New frontiers in electron beam lithography and extreme ultraviolet lithography
Extreme ultraviolet lithography
Extreme ultraviolet lithography is a next-generation lithography technology using an extreme ultraviolet wavelength, currently expected to be 13.5 nm.-EUVL light source:...

). Hence, resist-substrate charging is not repeatable and is difficult to compensate consistently. Negative charging deflects the electron beam away from the charged area while positive charging deflects the electron beam toward the charged area.

Electron beam resist performance

A study performed at the Naval Research Laboratory indicated that low-energy (10–50 eV) electrons were able to damage ~30 nm thick PMMA films. The damage was manifest as a loss of material.
  • For the popular electron-beam resist ZEP-520, a pitch resolution limit of 60 nm (30 nm lines and spaces), independent of thickness and beam energy, was found.
  • A 20 nm resolution had also been demonstrated using a 3 nm 100 keV electron beam and PMMA resist. 20 nm unexposed gaps between exposed lines showed inadvertent exposure by secondary electrons.
  • Hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) is a negative resist that is capable of forming sub-30 nm lines in very thin layers, but is itself similar to porous, hydrogenated SiO2. It may be used to etch silicon but not silicon dioxide or other similar dielectrics.

New frontiers in electron-beam lithography

To get around the secondary electron generation, it will be imperative to use low-energy electrons as the primary radiation to expose photoresist. Ideally, these electrons should have energies on the order of not much more than several eV
Electronvolt
In physics, the electron volt is a unit of energy equal to approximately joule . By definition, it is equal to the amount of kinetic energy gained by a single unbound electron when it accelerates through an electric potential difference of one volt...

 in order to expose the photoresist without generating any secondary electrons, since they will not have sufficient excess energy. Such exposure has been demonstrated using a scanning tunneling microscope
Scanning tunneling microscope
A scanning tunneling microscope is an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer , the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. For an STM, good resolution is considered to be 0.1 nm lateral resolution and...

 as the electron beam source. The data suggest that electrons with energies as low as 12 eV can penetrate 50 nm thick polymer photoresist. The drawback to using low energy electrons is that it is hard to prevent spreading of the electron beam in the photoresist. Low energy electron optical systems are also hard to design for high resolution. Coulomb inter-electron repulsion always becomes more severe for lower electron energy.
Another alternative in electron-beam lithography is to use extremely high electron energies (at least 100 keV) to essentially "drill" or sputter the material. This phenomenon has been observed frequently in transmission electron microscopy
Transmission electron microscopy
Transmission electron microscopy is a microscopy technique whereby a beam of electrons is transmitted through an ultra thin specimen, interacting with the specimen as it passes through...

. However, this is a very inefficient process, due to the inefficient transfer of momentum from the electron beam to the material. As a result it is a slow process, requiring much longer exposure times than conventional electron beam lithography. Also high energy beams always bring up the concern of substrate damage.

Interference lithography
Interference lithography
Interference lithography is a technique for patterning regular arrays of fine features, without the use of complex optical systems or photomasks.-Basic principle:...

 using electron beams is another possible path for patterning arrays with nanometer-scale periods. A key advantage of using electrons over photons in interferometry
Interferometry
Interferometry refers to a family of techniques in which electromagnetic waves are superimposed in order to extract information about the waves. An instrument used to interfere waves is called an interferometer. Interferometry is an important investigative technique in the fields of astronomy,...

 is the much shorter wavelength for the same energy.

Despite the various intricacies and subtleties of electron beam lithography at different energies, it remains the most practical way to concentrate the most energy into the smallest area.

There has been significant interest in the development of multiple electron beam approaches to lithography in order to increase throughput. This work has been supported by SEMATECH
SEMATECH
- Purpose :SEMATECH , a not-for-profit consortium, performs research and development to advance chip manufacturing. SEMATECH has broad engagement with various sectors of the R&D community, including chipmakers, equipment and material suppliers, universities, research institutes, and government...

and start-up companies such as Multibeam Corporation and Mapper. However, the degree of parallelism required to be competitive would need to be very high (at least 10 million, as estimated above); this is far in excess of most scheduled demonstrations.
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