TOPOGRAPHY MINIMIZATION OF NEUTRAL LAYER OVERCOATS IN DIRECTED SELF-ASSEMBLY APPLICATIONS

摘要

A method 400 is provided for patterning a layered substrate that includes loading a substrate into a coater-developer processing system (410); coating the substrate with a photoresist material layer (420); patterning the photoresist material layer (430); transferring the substrate to a deposition processing system (440); and depositing a neutral layer over the photoresist pattern and exposed portions of the substrate (450). The neutral layer can deposited using a gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) process, or an atomic layer deposition (ALD) process, which has minimal topography. The method may further include lifting off a portion of the neutral layer deposited over the photoresist pattern to expose a neutral layer template (510); depositing a DSA material layer over the neutral layer template (520); baking the DSA material layer to form a DSA pattern (530); and developing the DSA material layer to expose the final DSA pattern for subsequent feature etching (540).