2015 PST Awardees

The Outstanding Achievement Award

Hiroo Kinoshita, University of Hyogo

 

The Photopolymer Science and Technology Award No.141100, the Outstanding Achievement Award 2014, was presented to Hiroo Kinoshita (University of Hyogo) for his outstanding achievements in photopolymer science and technology, involving “Technology Development of Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUVL) for Semiconductors”.
   Hiroo Kinoshita is a Professor at Laboratory of Advanced Science and Technology, and Director of the Center for EUVL, University of Hyogo. He received his Master Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Keio University, Japan in 1974. Following he joined NTT Laboratories in 1974 where he began his career in lithographic technologies for semiconductor devices. He received his Doctor of Engineering in Mechanical Science from Keio University in 1994. He joined Himeji Institute of Technology (University of Hyogo) in 1995 as Professor of Laboratory of Advanced Science and Technology.
   He received the Long Lifetime Achievement Award of Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography from the 2009 International Workshop on EUV Lithography, July 2009, because of continuous working in the research and development field of EUVL for 25 years.
   In September, 2010, he received the Fellow of the Japan Society of Applied Physics, because of his great accomplishment in the research field of EUVL. He received Science Award from Hyogo Prefecture in October, 2010. And he received Yamazaki-Teiichi Prize in November, 2010. These award were given to him because of pioneering research and longtime contribution for industrial approach on extreme ultraviolet lithography.
   In April 2011, he received the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Prizes for Science and Technology in Research Category. This award was also given to him because of poioneering research and longtime contribution for industrial approach on extreme ultraviolet lithography.
   In October, 2012, he received Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize, OSA Award. The Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize recognizes significant research accomplishments in the field of optical engineering. The award is presented to Hiroo Kinoshita for pioneering research in the development of EUV reduction lithography with a multilayer-coated reflective imaging system and a reflective mask for use in the fabrication of semiconductor integrated circuits.

 

 

 

The Best Paper Award

Hirokazu Kato, Yuriko Seino, Hiroki Yonemitsu, Hironobu Sato, Masahiro Kanno, Katsutoshi Kobayashi, Ayako Kawanishi, Tsubasa Imamura, Mitsuhiro Omura, Naofumi Nakamura, Tsukasa Azuma

Toshiba Corporation

   Immersion 193-nm lithography is currently used but it is reaching its resolution limit. To extend the further finer patterns, several lithography candidates have been investigated. The leading candidate to replace 193-nm lithography for future node is extreme ultraviolet EUV for single pattering solution. However, insertion of EUV lithography into high volume manufacturing is delayed as it is still far from the current 193-nm lithography throughput due to the difficulty of development of sufficient 13.5-nm power source. DSA (directed self-assembly) has gained great attention as one of the next generation patterning technologies since it is simple and compatible with conventional lithography processes.
   DSA utilizes the domains formed by phase separation of the block copolymers induced by the annealing process. These domains show a range of shapes, including hexagonal close packed cylinders and lamellar stacks that resembles the features as hole and line and space structures in lithography. The cylinder structures can be used for contact hole shrink process due to the difficulty in direct patterning of the smaller size contact hole with acceptable CD (critical dimension) uniformity.
   There are several significant challenges for DSA to be overcome for actual use in LSI manufacturing, such as selectivity in reactive ion etching, the following pattern transfer, low defect in pattern formation during the self-assembling and CD uniformity.
   One of the main issues is defect in patterning processes. There has been efforts to investigate the defect of DSA process by observing the pattern performance in 300 mm base line process. To make DSA in a practical use, one needs to check the DSA performance in several processes. The challenges were needed to investigate issues of the processes in the actual manufacturing-oriented environment.
   The authors have been working on the full integration of DSA contact hole shrink process. Their research includes electrical test results of single via, DSA process verification in terms of CD uniformity and CER (contact edge roughness) and the improvement in process margin by wet development. They also tried to find the optimized process by modeling DSA process using DPD (dissipative particle dynamics) simulation. Finally, they have conducted electrical via chain yield tests for verifying the total performance of DSA contact hole shrink process as well as the failure analysis.
   As described above, Dr. Azuma and his group have conducted fundamental and useful research on the development of DSA technology that is valuable for the future establishment of LSI application.