Patent ID: 7365014

Claim:
A method of reducing critical dimension bias during fabrication of a reticle, comprising: (a) providing a reticle starting substrate comprising a radiation-transmitting base substrate layer, a radiation-blocking layer overlying said base substrate layer, at least one inorganic hard mask layer overlying said radiation-blocking layer, wherein said at least one hard mask layer exhibits anti-reflective properties capable of substantially reducing reflection of optical radiation off a surface of said radiation-blocking layer, and a chemically amplified photoresist layer overlying said hard masking layer; (b) direct writing a latent image into said chemically amplified photoresist layer; (c) developing said photoresist containing said latent image into a patterned photoresist; (d) transferring a pattern from said photoresist to said at least one inorganic hard mask layer using a plasma etch technique, to provide a patterned inorganic hard mask layer exhibiting anti-reflective properties; and (e) transferring said pattern from said at least one patterned inorganic hard mask layer to said radiation-blocking layer using a plasma etch technique, whereby the increase in a critical dimension of said radiation-blocking layer after patterning from said developed photoresist critical dimension is about 7% or less.