Dendrimers with thermally labile end groups: An alternative approach to chemically amplified resist materials designed for sub-100 nm lithography

Chemically amplified resist (CAR) technology continues to be one of the most promising candidates for the next generation of lithographic resist materials capable of imaging feature sizes below 100 nm. The extremely high sensitivity of CARs relies almost entirely on the chemistry of photoacid catalysis, whereby a single radiation event can induce the chemical transformation of hundreds of species. In this context, the role of polymer architecture in lithographic imaging was studied at these small feature sizes.