Comparative study of e-beam resist processes at different development temperature

The effect of development temperatures on the performance of three mostly used e-beam resists, ZEP-520, HSQ and SAL-601 have been investigated. For the positive resist ZEP-520, the contrast increases significantly, but the sensitivity decreases, with the decreasing of the development temperature. On the other hand, the negative resist HSQ whose sensitivity decreases dramatically, but the contrast increases, with the increase of developer temperature. Unlike the negative resist HSQ, the sensitivity of the negative chemically amplified resist SAL-601 enhances with the increase of the developer temperature and the contrast decreases. Using high contrast process, we have achieved high dense patterns with e-beam lithography at low electron energy.