Efficient ozone, sulfate and ammonium free resist stripping process

In recent years, photomask resist strip and cleaning technology development was substantially driven by the industry's need to prevent surface haze formation through the elimination of sulfuric acid and ammonium hydroxide from these processes. As a result, conventional SPM (H2SO4 + H2O2) was replaced with Ozone water (DIO3) for resist stripping and organic removal to eliminate chemical haze formation [1, 2]. However, it has been shown that DIO3 based strip and clean process causes oxidative degradation of photomask materials [3, 4]. Such material damage can affect optical properties of functional mask layers, causing CD line-width, phase, transmission and reflection changes, adversely affecting image transfer during the Lithography process. To overcome Ozone induced surface damage, SUSS MicroTec successfully developed a highly efficient strip process, where photolysis of DIO3 is leading to highly reactive hydroxyl radical formation, as the main contribution to hydrocarbon removal without surface damage [5]. This technology has been further extended to a final clean process, which is utilizing pure DI Water for residual organic material removal during final clean [6]. Recently, SUSS MicroTec did also successfully release strip and clean processes which completely remove NH4OH, eliminating any chemicals known today to induce haze [7]. In this paper we show the benefits of these new technologies for highly efficient sulfate and ammonium free stripping and cleaning processes.