Polymer resist materials for excimer ablation lithography

Excimer ablation lithography (EAL) is a new lithography suitable to TFT-LCD. Among the constituent technologies, the polymer materials for the resist is most crucial, as high ablation rates are required at low fluence. To elucidate the ablation mechanism at low fluence we specified some characteristic features through observations of about 200 polymers. The low fluence features are explained by the contributions from the primary and secondary structures, and ablation dynamic process. From the results, it is derived that polyurethane is most promising material for EAL, and the design of the secondary structure is essential to improve the ablation rate. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.