New models for the simulation of post-exposure bake of chemically amplified resist

Post exposure bake (PEB) models in the lithography simulator SOLID-C have been extended in order to improve the description of kinetic and diffusion phenomena in chemically amplified resists. We have implemented several new models and options which take into account effects such as the diffusion of quencher base, different approaches to model the neutralization between photogenerated acid and a quencher base, spontaneous loss of quencher, and arbitrary dependencies of the diffusion coefficients on acid or inhibitor, respectively. In this study, the impact of these new model options on critical phenomena like iso-dense bias, linearity and line end shortening are examined. The simulations were performed for a calibrated KrF/ArF resist models.