Feasibility study of resist slimming for SIT

Wet chemical slimming of resist can enable a resist mandrel for sidewall-image transfer (SIT) by decreasing the mandrel width and smoothing the mandrel sidewalls. This would reduce the cost of the SIT process. Several key metrics are used to compare the traditional etched mandrel and the slimmed resist mandrel, including: process window, critical dimension uniformity, and defectivity. New resists are shown to have larger process windows after slimming than an etched mandrel process while maintaining comparable critical dimension uniformity. The major challenge to the resist mandrel is the profile post-slim.