Conventionally, in a field of manufacturing a semiconductor apparatus, transfer of a circuit pattern has been performed on a substrate, e.g., a semiconductor wafer, by employing a lithography process by using a resist. In such a lithography process, a surface treatment using UV has been performed in which the resist is reformed by irradiation of UV after exposure and development and hardened, to thereby enhancing mechanical strength thereof.
Conventionally, therefore, in a field of manufacturing a semiconductor apparatus, there has been employed a surface treating device having a UV irradiation mechanism.
Further, recently, it has been tried to perform a surface treatment for reforming of a resist or an insulation film, by irradiating electrons by using electron beams (EB) instead of UV.
In such a surface treatment using the electrons, the electrons are irradiated to a subject to be treated, e.g., a semiconductor wafer or a glass substrate, which is accommodated in a vacuum chamber under a vacuum atmosphere, to thereby reform the resist or the insulation film. The aforementioned prior art has a characteristic that the treatment can be performed in a very short time. Such a prior art has been disclosed in, e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2002-237492.
As mentioned above, it has been tried to perform a surface treatment using electron beams capable of performing the surface treatment in a much shorter time, compared with the case of using UV.
The present inventors have developed a surface treating device described above, and after performing many experimentations, have found that the surface treating device using the electrons has problems, as follows.
It has been found that in the surface treating device using the electrons, while the treatment can be performed in a short time, in-surface uniformity of the treatment becomes deteriorated since in-surface treatment on a substrate to be treated becomes non-uniform due to a non-uniform irradiation state of the electrons starting from the point where the electrons work strongly. In addition, such a problem has been found that accuracy of the treatment becomes worsened since an energy distribution of electrons (electron beams) becomes broad, whereby the electron energy becomes non-uniform.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds