Pattern Transfer of Hydrogen Depassivation Lithography Patterns into Silicon with Atomically Traceable Placement and Size Control

Published

July 17, 2014

Author(s)

Josh Ballard, Stephen McDonnell, Don Dick, Maia Bischof, Joseph Fu, D Jaeger, James Owen , w Owen, Justin Alexander, Udi Fuchs, Pradeep Namboodiri, Kai Li, John Randall, Robert Wallace, Yves Chabal, Richard Reidy, Richard M. Silver

Abstract

Reducing the scale of etched nanostructures below the 10 nm range eventually will require an atomic scale understanding of the masks being used in order to maintain exquisite control over both feature size and feature density. Here, we demonstrate a method for tracking atomically resolved and controlled structures from initial template definition through final nanostructure metrology, opening up a pathway for top-down atomic control over nanofabrication. First, hydrogen depassivation lithography is performed on hydrogen terminated Si(100) using a scanning tunneling microscope, which spatially defines chemically reactive regions. Next, atomic layer deposition of titanium dioxide produces an etch-resistant hard mask pattern on these regions. Reactive ion etching then transfers the mask pattern onto Si with pattern height of 17 nm, critical dimension of approximately 6 nm, and full-pitch down to 13 nm. The effects of linewidth, template atomic defect density, and line-edge roughness are examined in the context of controlling fabrication with arbitrary feature control, suggesting a possible critical dimension of better than 2 nm on 10 nm tall features. A metrology standard is demonstrated, where the atomically resolved mask template is used to determine the size of a nanofabricated sample showing a route to image correction.

Citation

Science

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

Sacnning Tunneling Microscopy, Lithography, Atomic Layer deposition

Citation

Ballard, J. , McDonnell, S. , Dick, D. , Bischof, M. , Fu, J. , Jaeger, D. , Owen, J. , Owen, W. , Alexander, J. , Fuchs, U. , Namboodiri, P. , Li, K. , Randall, J. , Wallace, R. , Chabal, Y. , Reidy, R. and Silver, R. (2014), Pattern Transfer of Hydrogen Depassivation Lithography Patterns into Silicon with Atomically Traceable Placement and Size Control, Science (Accessed October 6, 2024)