Fluorine-Stabilized Acid Amplifiers for Use in EUV Lithography

Abstract

This paper presents two new concepts that together provide a 100,000X improvement in stability for AAs that produce highly-fluorinated, strong sulfonic acids. These two new design concepts are based on (1) an olefin-trigger structure and (2) a trifluoromethyl group alpha to the sulfonic ester. These approaches led to the synthesis of the first stable acid amplifier that generates triflic acid and for the synthesis of AAs that are stable enough to be used as monomers in free-radical polymerization reactions yet produce very strong, fluorinated acids. Lastly, we present preliminary results where one new AA is able to improve the LER of a control resist from 4.6 ± 0.5 nm to 2.1 ± 0.1 nm.