Stochastic modeling in lithography: autocorrelation behavior of catalytic reaction-diffusion systems

Reaction-diffusion chemical systems where the catalyst of the reaction is the only diffusing species are investigated. Here, the correlation length and Hurst roughness exponent are derived in one-, two-, and three-dimensional first-order catalytic reaction-diffusion problems. These results are relevant to many chemical systems, and in particular to chemically amplified photoresists used in semiconductor lithography, where the correlation length and Hurst exponent affect the line-edge roughness of sub-100-nm printed features. (c) 2009 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. [DOI: 10.1117/1.3155516]