Improved Electron-Beam/Deep-Ultraviolet Intralevel Mix-and-Match Lithography with 100 nm Resolution

We have developed a novel electron-beam (e-beam)/deep-ultraviolet (DUV) intralevel mix-and-match (ILM&M) lithography as a production-viable technology. The main feature of the ILM&M lithography is its use of a DUV biased exposure method for increased throughput and a combination of a variably shaped e-beam/character projection writer with a step-and-repeat DUV scanning system for accurate intralevel butting between e-beam and DUV patterns. It was demonstrated that the throughput of e-beam writing in the ILM&M lithography could reach about three times that of e-beam lithography, and that an intralevel butting accuracy of less than 50 nm could be achieved. The proposed ILM&M has been successfully applied to the development and early production of leading edge devices at our laboratory.