Gelest in photoresist collaboration

Mitsubishi Chemical company Gelest, which specialises in silicones, organosilanes, metal-organics and acrylate monomers, has agreed a strategic collaboration with Lam Research, a supplier of wafer fabrication equipment and services to the semiconductor industry, and Entegris, the global leader in electronic materials for semiconductors.

Under this, Gelest will supply precursor chemicals for Lam’s breakthrough dry photoresist technology for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. The three will also work together on R&D into EUV dry resist for future device generations of logic and DRAM products and on EUV dry resist systems for high numerical aperture (high-NA) EUV patterning.

“High-NA EUV is widely seen as the patterning technology that will be required for continued device scaling and advancement of semiconductor technology over the coming decades,” Gelest stated. “Dry resist provides the high etch resistance and tunable thickness scaling of deposition and development necessary to support high-NA EUV’s reduced depth of focus requirements.”

Lam first developed dry resist in collaboration with ASML and IMEC. CTO Rick Gottscho described it as “a breakthrough that shatters the biggest barriers to scaling to future DRAM nodes and logic with EUV lithography”. It is said to extend the resolution, productivity and yield of EUV lithography, while also providing superior dose-to-size and dose-to-defectivity performance.