Όνομα Περιοδικού:Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, Part 2: Letters
The morphology of photoresist polymer surfaces fabricated by lithographic processes is shown to exhibit self-affine behavior for a specific range of scales. The roughness parameters appropriate for the characterization of self-affine surfaces (surface width ω, correlation length χ and roughness exponent α) are found to depend on the exposure dose (i.e. the solubility) involved in the lithography process and to be correlated. A similar dependence and correlation is extracted from a Monte-Carlo simulation of polymer dissolution, thus indicating the pronounced contribution of the dissolution process to the formation of lithographic roughness. The self-affinity and the correlated behavior of the roughness parameters is a general phenomenon for dissolving polymers of varying solubility and not limited to the lithographic process.