Volatile vapor knife of immersion lithography hood using solutal Marangoni effect

Abstract

Water-based immersion lithography has been introduced for achieving O(10 nm) spatial resolution in the semiconductor industry. The major challenges remaining in immersion lithography are to decrease the tail of the main lens and to prevent residual droplet formation after the main lens while increasing the relative speed of the silicon wafer with respect to the main lens. Here, we propose a novel method to control the shape of the immersion lens by applying Marangoni stress using volatile vapor. Furthermore, we experimentally and theoretically observed that the stability and wafer speed of the immersion lens are increased by the vapor-driven solutal Marangoni effect.