Patent ID: 11961738
Assignee: TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY LTD.
Field: Semiconductors (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 15:
16. A method of manufacturing a semiconductor device, comprising:
forming a photo resist layer over an underlying layer disposed over a semiconductor substrate;
determining an optimum dose amount of an actinic radiation carrying pattern information from a photo mask with respect to the photo resist layer and a mask pattern of the photo mask;
determining an exposure dose amount less than the optimum dose amount;
exposing the photo resist layer to the actinic radiation carrying pattern information with the determined exposure dose amount;
developing the exposed photo resist layer to form a developed resist pattern;
forming a hard mask layer over the developed resist pattern;
performing a planarization operation to expose the developed resist pattern;
forming a hard mask pattern by removing the developed resist pattern; and
patterning the underlying layer by using the hard mask pattern as an etching mask,
wherein the hard mask layer includes one or more of silicon nitride, SiON, SiOC, SiOCN, SiCN, aluminum oxide, aluminum nitride or aluminum oxynitride, and
wherein the exposure dose amount is 10% to 40% less than the optimum dose amount.