VLSI Design (Unit-1) Lecture Notes strictly for internal circulation Page | 25 A photomask is constructed with chromium (chrome)

covered quartz glass. A UV light source isused to expose the photoresist. Figure:1 illustrates the lithography process. The photomask has chromewhere light should be blocked. The UV light floods the mask from the backside and passes through theclear sections of the mask to expose the organic photoresist (PR) that has been coated on the wafer. Adeveloper solvent is then used to dissolve the soluble unexposed photoresist, leaving islands of insolubleexposed photoresist. This is termed a negative photoresist. A positive resist is initially insoluble, and whenexposed to UV becomes soluble. Positive resists provide for higher resolution than negative resists, but areless sensitive to light. As feature sizes become smaller, the photoresist layers have to be made thinner. Thisis turn makes them less robust and more subject to failure. In turn, this can impact the overall yield of aprocess and the cost to produce the chip. Fig:1 Photomasking with a negative resist The photomask is commonly called a reticle and is usually smaller than the wafer, e.g., 2 cm on aside. A stepper moves the reticle to successive locations to completely expose the wafer.Projection printing is normally used, in which lenses between the reticle and wafer focus thepattern on the wafer surface. The reticle can be the same size as the area to be patterned (IX) or larger. Forinstance, 2.5X and 5X steppers with optical reduction have been used in the industry.The wavelength of the light source influences the minimum feature size that can be printed .In the1980s, mercury lamps with 436 nm or 365 nm wavelengths were used. Currently 193 nm argon-fluoridelasers are used for the critical layers down to the 90 nm node. In the future, 13.4 nm extreme ultraviolet(EUV) light sources may be used, but at present these sources are costly and require prohibitivelyexpensive reflective optics.Wavelengths comparable to or greater than the feature size cause distortion in the patternsexposed on the photoresist. Resolution enhancement techniques precompensate for this distortion so thedesired patterns are obtained. These techniques involve modifying the amplitude, phase, or direction of the incoming light. Optical proximity correction (OPC) makes small changes to the patterns on the masks tocompensate for these local distortions. 1.3 Well and Channel Formation Varying proportions of donor and acceptor impurities can be achieved using epitaxy, deposition, orimplantation. Epitaxy involves growing a single-crystal film on the silicon by subjecting the silicon wafersurface to an elevated temperature and a source of dopant material.