Geert Vandenberghe, Young-Chang Kim, Christie Delvaux, Kevin Lucas, Sang-Jun Choi, Monique Ercken & Kurt Ronse, IMEC, Leuven, Belgium; Bert Vleeming, ASML, Veldhoven, Holland

As ArF resists mature, lithographers are pushing the imaging limits as far as possible. As shown earlier, ArF lithography is getting ready for the 130nm technology node and currently even the 100nm node printability with ArF is being studied. Since high numerical aperture (NA) ArF scanners are not yet available in volume, strong enhancement techniques will be required to meet these challenging targets at lower NA (0.63NA). In this paper we give an overview of the status of 193nm lithography towards 100nm patterning of memory and logic front-end features, and explore the various enhancement techniques needed.