Thermal conductivity measurements of thin-film resist

In electron-beam and photolithography, local heating can change the resist sensitivity and lead to variations in significant critical dimension. Existing models suffer from the lack of experimental data for the thermal properties of the polymer resist films. We present the measurements of both out-of-plane and in-plane thermal conductivity of thin resist films following different exposure conditions. An optical thermoreflectance technique was used to characterize out-of-plane thermal conductivity; the out-of-plane thermal conductivity of exposed SPR(TM)-700 resist increases as a function of exposure dose. We also designed and fabricated a free-standing micro-electrode structure for measuring the in-plane thermal conductivity and results for poly (methylmethacrylate) films were obtained, indicating that, unlike polyimide films, there is no appreciable anisotropic behavior. (C) 2001 American Vacuum Society.