Wet etch reduction of gate widths

摘要

A method of forming sublithography gate lengths involves the steps of patterning the layer of resist above the gate stack (including a gate layer, hardmask layer and etch-control layer) to a desired gate length and etching the etch-control layer and the hardmask layer; the portion of the circuit that has the correct gate length is covered with a blocking mask and the hardmask in the remainder is wet-etched to reduce its dimension, after which the gate stack is etched using both gate lengths of hardmask to produce different gate lengths in different areas.