Quantum electrodynamical formulation of photochemical acid generation and its implications on optical lithography

Abstract

The photochemical acid generation is refined from the first principles of quan-tum electrodynamics. First, we briefly review the formulation of the quantum theory of light based on the quantum electrodynamics framework to establish the probability of acid generation at a given spacetime point. The quantum mechanical acid generation is then combined with the deprotection mecha-nism to obtain a probabilistic description of the deprotection density directly related to feature formation in a photoresist. A statistical analysis of the ran-dom deprotection density is presented to reveal the leading characteristics of stochastic feature formation.

Keywords

• extreme ultraviolet lithography
• optical lithography
• quantum electrodynamics
• quantum optics