Dry thermal development of negative electron beam resist polystyrene

We report dry thermal development of negative resist polystyrene with low molecular weight. When developed on a hotplate at 350oC for 30 min, polystyrene showed reasonable high contrast and resolution (30 nm half-pitch), but low sensitivity. Resist sensitivity was greatly improved at lower development temperatures, though at the cost of reduced contrast. In addition, we observed the thickness reduction due to thermal development was higher for larger remaining film thickness, implying the thermal development process is not just a surface process and the more volatile chains below the top surface may diffuse to the surface and get evaporated.