Abstract
Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) resist materials continue to gain attention as one of the most critical components for EUV lithography. An ideal EUV resists must simultaneously improve the resolution, line-edge roughness (LER), and sensitivity (RLS). In a resist film the inhomogeneous structures in the nanometer region tend to have significant direct influence on the resolution and LER, and indirect influence on the sensitivity. Therefore in this study, we have investigated the inhomogeneity of photoacid generators (PAGs) in a hybrid resist for EUV lithography using molecular dynamics simulations. The simulation results indicate the inhomogeneous positions and motions of the PAG cations and anions in the hybrid resist film. The distance between the PAG cation and anion does not play an important role in influencing the positions and motions of PAG. The correlation between the appearance frequency and the distance between the PAG cation and anion was very weak.
