Electron-beam hardening

Fig. 12 (Right) Comparison of thermal flows of 3.5 fim thick resist images at 250°C (a) no treatment, (b) electron beam hardening, (c) Deep UV-hardening.

Okoroanyanwu, J. Shields, and C.Y. Yang, Process for preventing deformation of patterned photoresist features, U.S. Patent No. 6,589,709 (2003) C. Gabriel, H.J. Levinson, and U. Okoroanyanwu, Selective photoresist hardening to facilitate lateral trimming, U.S. Patent No. 6,716,571 (2004) W.R. Livesay, A.L. Rubiales, M. Ross, S. Woods, and S. Campbell, Electron beam hardening of photoresists, Proc. SPIE 1925, 426 436 (1993). 

As shown in Fig. 1, low energy electron beam irradiation hardened the treated surface layer to a indentation penetration depth of about 3 im. The electron-beam hardening decayed significantly with increasing penetration depth. Therefore, the hybrid surface reinforced specimen has a large gradient of hardness along the depth direction. However, the enhanced... 

Thermal (Flame/Induction/Electron Beam Hardening and Melting/Laser Hardening and melting)... 

Molded polyamide surfaces can be hardened by grafting with Ai,Ai-diallylacrylamide [3085-68-5] monomer under exposure to electron beam (159). AijAZ-DiaHyltartardiamide [58477-85-3] is a cross-linking agent for acrylamide reversible gels in electrophoresis. Such gels can be dissolved by a dilute periodic acid solution in order to recover protein fractions. 

Spherical rollers were machined from AISI 52100 steel, hardened to a Rockwell hardness of Rc 60 and manually polished with diamond paste to RMS surface roughness of 5 nm. Two glass disks with a different thickness of the silica spacer layer are used. For thin film colorimetric interferometry, a spacer layer about 190 nm thick is employed whereas FECO interferometry requires a thicker spacer layer, approximately 500 nm. In both cases, the layer was deposited by the reactive electron beam evaporation process and it covers the entire underside of the glass disk with the exception of a narrow radial strip. The refractive index of the spacer layer was determined by reflection spectroscopy and its value for a wavelength of 550 nm is 1.47. 

Curing or hardening of organic protective coatings (paints, inks) by exposure to infrared, UV, or electron-beam radiation. Required are a monomer or oligomer and a photoninitiator. which induces polymerization by free radical formation. 

One major difficulty with electron microscopy is that some latex particles are adversely affected by the electron beam. Shadowing techniques and hardening procedures (Corio et a ., 1979) can sometimes be used to overcome this problem. A further difficulty inherent in any PSD measurement by electron microscopy resides in the need to measure a large number of images of latex particles on a photographic print. Gerrens (1959) has stated that at least 3000 particles must be measured in order to obtain a statistically meaningful distribution. This involves considerable human... 

Electrocure. TM for a process for hardening or curing paint films on plastics by use of low-volt-age electron beams. Paints so treated cure in four sec or less at room temperature the finishes produced are said to be superior in resistance to abrasion and chemicals. The process can also be applied to other substrates such as wood, glass, metals, etc. 

It is also possible to smoothen the walls of patterned resist features, using standard post-lithographic processing techniques such as UV hardening, electron-beam irradiation, and thermal flow. The use of surfactant rinse liquids has also been shown to improve LER of patterned resist features to acceptable values. ... 

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