Effect of functional organic additives on the resist stripper

Abstract

Photolithography is one of the most commonly used technologies in the fabrication of a semiconductor device and printed circuit board (PCB). Stripping is one of the photolithography processes to remove the residual resists. There is an issue that residual resists make problems in the next process of manufacturing devices. In addition, foams are generated during the strip process in spraying facilities and copper line was etched by the stripper. In this work, we have studied the effect of functional organic additives on the resist stripper, such as defoamer and etching inhibitor. Fluorescence microscope was used to evaluate the strip efficiency. The foam height was examined by the Bartsch method, and etched thickness of copper was measured by the weight loss method. The foam height of the novel stripper containing block copolymer decreased nearly to zero. Moreover, when tolyltriazole was introduced in the stripper, etched thickness of copper decreased under 0.04 um. Thus, block copolymer and azole compounds could be useful functional additives in the stripper to make the foam height decrease and lower the etched thickness of copper. The new stripper can be applied to form the fine pitch patterns in the PCB and semiconductor industries.