An organosilicon novalac resin for multilevel resist applications.

We have studied a low etch rate organosilicon novalac resin which can be used as the base resin component of thin-imaging resists in multilevel lithography schemes. The resin, a terpolymer of phenol, trimethylsilylphenol, and formaldehyde resists oxygen RIE and can be used in conventional resist formulations which employ o-quinonediazide solubility inhibitors. We report here the synthesis and RIE properties of resists based upon these resins. The resin we have developed allows oxygen RIE to be used as the imaging transferring step.