7.1 Bake Steps

Baking a resist may have many purposes, e.g., from removing the solvent to catalyzing chemical amplification. In addition to the intended results baking may also cause numerous unintended outcomes. For example, the light sensitive component of the resist may decompose at temperatures typically used to remove the solvent, which is an extremely serious concern for a chemically amplified resist since the remaining solvent content has a strong impact on the diffusion and amplification rates. Most important, all baking aspects affect the dissolution properties of the resist and thus have direct influence on the developed resist profile. For modeling issues the baking steps are grouped together in a pre- and post-exposure simulation phase.