Progress of top surface imaging process

Top surface imaging (TSI) process is a very important technology to extend the photolithography down to 0.1 /spl mu/m or smaller dimension. As the silylation process, we have been evaluating a bi-layer silylation process and a silylation process applying silylation treatment after alkaline wet development (SILYAL). In this paper, we report the high performance of the silylation process for 193-nm lithography and also the high capability of this process for 157-nm lithography. For the former process, patterns are generated without using wet-development, therefore, the adhesive property and high transparency of resist material are not necessary. For the latter process, wet-development is applied to the top layer, therefore, this process is similar to bi-layer resist process using Si-containing resist.