Photoresist materials that are capable of providing high resolution, sensitivity, and structural integrity represent one of the indispensable sources in lithographic technologies. In this regime, diblock brush terpolymers (DBTs)-based negative-tone1 and positive-tone2 photoresists have been developed over the past few years and demonstrated their capacities on producing pixel-sized patterns by electron-beam lithography (EBL). As part of our continuous explorations on lithographic applications of molecular brushes, DBT thin films with thicknesses that did not match the contour length of the DBT backbone (L0) were prepared, through variations of brush concentrations. Results from secondary-ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) fluorine depth-profiling and surface analyses of DBT films indicated the construction of bi- and trilayered films, composed of vertically-aligned nanoscopic DBT building blocks in the bottom layer and bicontinuously hierarchical morphologies in the upper layer(s). These sophisticated assembly behaviors facilitated the partitioning of photoacid generator (PAG) molecules within the chemically-amplified resist (CAR) films that possessed incommensurate thicknesses beyond 2L0. EBL negative-tone treatments of CAR films gave patterned lines that exhibited novel wavy line features. Moreover, these unique resist materials resulted in further enhanced performance with an apparent differential degree of strain that led to a tuning of the wavelengths, simply by alteration of the DBT concentrations.

Wavy patterning of molecular brush-based photoresists

254th National Meeting (2017)

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