Non-alkyl tin-oxo clusters as new-type patterning materials for nanolithography

• 作者: Di Wang Xiaofeng Yi Lei Zhang
• 来源期刊: 中国科学：化学（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2022,（1）
• 所属期刊栏目: ARTICLES
• 页码范围: 114-119
• 页数: 6页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

Nanolithography plays crucial roles in the miniaturization of dense integrated circuit,which extremely depends on innovative resist materials.Recently,metal-containing resists have been explored due to their higher short-wavelength photon absorption than traditional polymer resists.Herein,for the first time,the patterning performance of non-alkyl tin-oxo clusters has been evaluated.Meanwhile,the influence of structural characteristics on resolution and sensitivity has been investigated.To evaluate the surface ligand effect,three non-alkyl Sn10-oxo clusters with the same core were functionalized with pyrazole,3-methyl-pyrazole and 4-methylpyrazole,respectively.Furthermore,another Sn14-oXo cluster with similar core configuration was also prepared using 4-methylpyrazole ligand to study the influence of Sn nuclearity.Spin-coating method was then applied to fabricate thin films of these non-alkyl tin-oxo clusters on Si substrate,which showed various thicknesses and roughnesses.More interestingly,electron beam lithography (EBL) patterning studies indicated that for the same Sn10 core,the 4-methylpyrazole-decorated clusters showed the best performance.As for the different cluster cores with the same 4-methylpyrazole ligand,the patterns of Sn1o with the higher ligand:Sn ratio are also better than those of Sn14.Finally,distinguishable 50 nm resolution was achieved by 4-methylpyrazole-decorated Sn10 at expose energy of 100 μC/cm2 which can be significantly improved by in-creasing expose energy to 1,000 μC/cm2 as confirmed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) images.This work not only opens the nanolithography applications of non-alkyl tin-oxo clusters,but also provides an effective structural methodology for improving their patterning performance in future.