Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mphil-in-micro-and-nanotechnology-enterprise-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2023/paper-1/section-a-ii/3/i/solution
Past exam of the MPhil in micro- and nanotechnology enterprise course of the University of Cambridge 2023 Paper 1 Section A(ii) 3 i Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-20
For a positive photoresist, let be the largest dose retaining the nominal film and the clearing dose. With the conventional photoresist contrast definition,For a sinusoidal aerial image, the bright-to-dark dose ratio is , where is the Michelson contrast. A dose window that clears bright regions while retaining dark regions requiresThis assumes a fully modulated input pattern and that the plotted modulation transfer function gives the aerial-image contrast. It is a dose-window criterion, not a statement that the resist creates optical information absent from the image.[ref]
The two thresholds are approximatelyReading their intersections with the supplied curve gives, to graphical accuracy,for the lower- and higher-contrast resists respectively. These are the results independent of the dimensional frequency convention. Their minimum full periods are , and equal line/space widths are half those periods:An ArF excimer laser uses . A numerical length requires specifying what the caption's “Rayleigh limit” means. Taking it literally as the reciprocal of the Rayleigh criterion point separation givesIf instead the graph uses the common incoherent-cutoff normalization , the widths are and , with periods twice those values. The caption does not explicitly provide an equation for or define whether “feature size” means period or half-pitch, so these conventions must not be silently mixed. The higher-contrast resist resolves the higher normalized frequency in either convention.
New to topics? Read the docs here!