Cylindrical brush polymers were developed as a novel approach for negative- and positive-tone molecular-scale photoresist polymer materials.  The polymer architecture consists of a rigid backbone of polymerized norbornene, each linked to flexible short side chains.  The resultant 'bottle brush' topology has a cylindrical shape with short brush chains arranged concentrically around the backbone, in which the cylinder radius and length are determined by the number of monomers within the brush side chains and the degree of backbone polymerization, respectively.  The brush polymers composed of chemical components for substrate alignment and acid catalyzed-cross-linking/deprotection chemistries with the high degree of control in their compositional placement and concentric and lengthwise dimensions over the synthetic chemistry provide facile access to cylindrical nanoscopic objects due to their reduced entanglement.  The modularity of the synthetic system allows a wide diversity of lithographically-useful monomers, sequencing, dimensions, and property variation.  The photoresist materials, with the cylindrical brush polymers aligned perpendicular to the wafer surfaces, yielded electron-beam-generated patterns having widths of a few macromolecules, with the minimum pixel size determined by the cylinder diameter.In this presentation, design, synthesis, and performance of bottle brush polymers for negative- and positive-tone lithography will be discussed.  Several challenges in this pursuit including achieving vertical orientation, substrate adhesion, and sufficient structural integrity to survive development and rinse processes have been encountered.

Vertically assembled block brush polymers for bottom-up/top-down lithography

248th National Meeting (2014)

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