Imec has demonstrated that conventional chemically amplified resists still have room left in the High-NA era, patterning random logic with a single exposure.
The Belgian research institute printed lines and spaces down to 22nm pitch and vias spaced 28nm apart after one CAR-based High-NA EUV step, results it says came out of work with ASML and its material suppliers.
Why CAR resists matter again
Chemically amplified resist has carried optical lithography for decades. Its weakness has been resolution: at the 0.33 numerical aperture used by today’s EUV scanners, single-print CAR could not reach these pitches, which pushed the industry toward metal-oxide resists and multi-patterning. Imec’s data suggests CAR can cover several layers of the A14 and A10 logic nodes with one High-NA pass, keeping a familiar, well-characterized material in production.
Geert Vandenberghe, who leads patterning technology programs at Imec, said the results show CAR remains valuable as the industry moves into the angstrom era, and that co-optimizing resist chemistry with litho-etch steps made it possible.
The finding matters commercially because High-NA scanners cost far more per tool than their predecessors, so every layer that avoids extra exposures improves the economics of the next node. Imec said the work lays groundwork for further optimization, with the exact resist and etch recipes held by its partners.
