Worldwide interest in Medusa 84 – AR-N 8400 SiH
October 2024
October 2024
After a very successful participation in the EIPBN conference in San Diego (USA) at the end of May 2024, the Allresist research team was also represented at the MNE in Montpellier (France) as a Gold Sponsor with an impressive exhibition stand. Since Allresist has been actively involved in shaping the MNE since 2010, we are now an integral part of the community and regularly inform our users about the latest developments and improvements.
Fig. 1 Allresist R&D team at the MNE 2024 in Montpellier
As in previous years, our product portfolio attracted great interest, with the main focus of the congress this time being on our resist Medusa 84. While Allresist was able to present initial results already in San Diego, many interesting applications with excellent usage properties could now be shown in Montpellier.
HSQ, a widely used e-beam resist, will soon no longer be offered by the current manufacturer (DOW). Despite its advantages, HSQ also has serious drawbacks: its long-term stability is unsatisfactory (less than three months even when stored in a refrigerator), processing must be completed in a short time, and the resist must be prepared from a solid itself. A similar HSQ from other suppliers does not improve these properties since they are also based on the same commercial polymer.
In the interest of users, there was an urgent need for significant improvement. Allresist has taken on the technological challenge of developing a similar, but improved polymer with considerably better application features. Through a targeted synthesis (which specifically separates the stable and sensitive molecular fraction of hydrogen silsesquioxane) and extensive purification processes, we are now able to offer a resist with much higher stability. This stability is achieved through the addition of special stabilisers. Even after six months of storage in the refrigerator at 10 °C, the excellent application properties remain unchanged. Additionally, the process for electron beam lithography can be paused for several days without altering the parameters.
Allresist will soon offer ready-to-use resists as a replacement for HSQ in three different layer thicknesses:
Sales of samples have now begun and the regular market launch is planned for January 2025. This positive development has led us once again to choose Medusa 84 as the resist of the month.