A One-Component Negative Photoresist Based on an Epoxy Terpolymer Containing Oxime-Urethane Groups as a Photobase Generator

For their application as one-component photoresists, we prepared epoxy terpolymers containing oxime-urethane and benzophenone groups by the radical polymerization of glycidyl methacrylate (GMA), metha-cryloxyethyl benzophenoneoxime urethane (MBU), and N-(4-benzoyl)phenylmaleimide (BPMI). The terpolymer composition was optimized to provide the most photosensitive photoresist. The photo-decomposition reaction of the oxime-urethane groups in the terpolymer was monitored by UV absorption spectroscopy, and the photo-crosslinking reaction of the epoxy terpolymer was observed by measuring the normalized thickness. The photosensitivity of the epoxy terpolymer increased as the amount of BPMI and MBU units increased up to 16 and 24 mol%, respectively. Among the terpolymers we prepared, terpolymer T-II(contents of GMA, MBU, BPMI are 75, 19, 6.1 mole%, respectively) exhibited the highest photosensitivity ( $D_{c}$ $^{0.5}$ = 430 mJ/$\textrm{cm}^2$) and had a moderate contrast (${\gamma}$$^{p}$ = 1.23). Negative-tone micropatterns having a line width of ca. 10 ${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ were obtained by developing the system with chloroform.m.