The effect of dissolution inhibitors on the dissolution characteristics of a chemically amplified three-component positive resist

For chemically amplified electron beam (EB) resists composed of partially tert-butoxycarbonyl(tBOC)-protected poly(p-vinylphenol) (PVP), a dissolution inhibitor, and an acid generator, effects of the dissolution inhibitors on the dissolution characteristics of the resist are investigated. The dissolution inhibitors become dissolution promoters after exposure. We tried to increase the dissolution rate of the resist in the exposed area using dissolution promoters. We estimated the dissolution rate by using a model-composition resist which consisted of PVP as the matrix resin and benzoic acid derivatives as dissolution promoters. We evaluated the relationships between the acidity of benzoic acid derivatives and the dissolution rate of the model-composition resists. The higher the concentration of the benzoic acid derivatives is, the higher the dissolution rate of the model-composition resist. The dissolution rate of the model-composition resist increases linearly with the increase in acidity of the dissolution promoter. A dissolution promoter with high acidity increases the dissolution rate of a resist in the exposed area.