Quantum electrodynamical formulation of photochemical acid generation and its implications on optical lithography

The photochemical acid generation is refined from the very first principles of elementary particle physics. We first briefly review the formulation of the quantum theory of light based on the quantum electrodynamics framework to establish the probability for acid generation at a given spacetime point. The quantum mechanical acid generation is then combined with the deprotection mechanism to obtain the probabilistic description of the deprotection density, directly related to the feature formation in a photoresist. A statistical analysis of the random deprotection density is presented to reveal the leading characteristics of stochastic feature formation.