Patent ID: 7615338

Claim:
A method for forming a photoresist pattern, comprising: (a) coating a photoresist composition on an underlying layer of a semiconductor substrate; (b) performing a soft-bake onto the resultant structure of (a) to form a photoresist film; (c) exposing the photoresist film of (b) to light; (d) performing a post-bake onto the resulting structure of (c); (e) developing the resulting structure of (d) to form a first photoresist pattern; and (f) coating the coating composition on the first photoresist pattern to form a second photoresist pattern; wherein the coating composition consists of i) a water-soluble polymer having a repeating unit represented by the Formula 1, ii) an aqueous solvent and iii) an additive selected from the group consisting of a C 1 -C 10 alkyl alcohols and a C 2 -C 10 alkoxy alkyl alcohols: wherein R 1 and R 2 are individually selected from the group consisting of H, linear and branched C 1 -C 20 alkyl groups, halogen, and —CN groups; R 3 is selected from the group consisting of methyl, ethyl, propyl, butyl, octyl, octyl phenyl, nonyl, nonyl phenyl, decyl, decyl phenyl, undecyl, undecyl phenyl, dodecyl and dodecyl phenyl; R 4 is selected from the group consisting of Na, NH(R 5 ) 3 and N(R 6 ) 4 wherein R 5 and R 6 are individually selected from the group consisting of methyl, ethyl, propyl, butyl, octyl, octyl phenyl, nonyl, nonyl phenyl, decyl, decyl phenyl, undecyl, undecyl phenyl, dodecyl, and dodecyl phenyl; and n is an integer ranging from 10 to 3000.