Annealing treatments of cylindrical siloxane-based block copolymers optimized for nanomanufacturing11 Main research article.

Abstract

Ultra high resolution lithography (sub-15 nm) could be developed using the directed self-assembly of block copolymers (BCPs), for which a high incompatibility – i.e. high-χ – between the blocks is necessary. Here we present an industrial compatible scheme of the annealing processes performed on different PS-b-PDMS BCPs, presenting the horizontal cylindrical morphology to form line/space patterns by graphoepitaxy. For BCPs with a larger molecular weight (period 15 nm), we compare the annealing performances of different solvents with an emphasis on solvents satisfying the manufacturing requirements, where butylacetate appears to be well suited. Furthermore, we show that a lower molecular weight BCP (period 10 nm) presents a good self-assembly by thermal annealing. Both annealing processes developed here are fully integrable in a microelectronics environment for high resolution lithography. Keywords: Block copolymers, Directed self-assembly, PS-b-PDMS, Solvent annealing nanolithography