ArticleNature communications2025
Cryo-electron tomography reconstructs polymer in liquid film for fab-compatible lithography.
Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Electron-Induced C─F Bond Activation in SnAngewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Article
- Mechanisms of Film-Formation-Related Defects in EUV Photoresists for Sub-3 nm Nodes and Synergistic Materials-Process-Intelligence Co-Optimization.Micromachines · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
16 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Liquid film is ubiquitous in nature and serves as the critical medium for the dissolution of photoresist to create nanoscale circuit patterns in lithography, which is a core task since the birth of semiconductor industry. However, despite decades of research, the microscopic behaviors of photoresist in liquid film and at interfaces remain elusive, leading to industrial effort for pattern defect control largely a trial-and-error process. Here, we unravel the nanostructures and dynamics of photoresist polymers in liquid film and at gas-liquid interface using a cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) methodology. The native-state three-dimensional structures of photoresist polymers are reconstructed by cryo-ET at significantly improved resolution compared to conventional methods. Cryo-ET reconstructions resolve the spatial distributions of photoresist polymers across gas-liquid interface into bulk solution, revealing the cohesional entanglements between polymer chains. By inhibiting the polymer entanglements and leveraging photoresist's adsorption at gas-liquid interface, the contaminations across 12 inch wafers have been eliminated under industrial conditions, yielding a > 99% improvement in minimizing the pattern defects for fab-compatible lithography.
Identifiers
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Registered trials
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