Polyanilines: In situ induced conductivity and applications thereof

Abstract

In the last few years, considerable interest has been focused on the polyanilines. This class of polymers undergo doping with cationic reagents most commonly protonic acids. The doping techniques commonly used have involved reaction of the polymer with external solutions of the dopant. In this paper, we introduce novel techniques for inducing the conductivity in situ in the polyanilines thereby climinating the need for external wet solutions. These methods allow the direct processing of the conducting form of the polyaniline and simplify the development of polyaniline blends. In addition, we will describe several applications of the polyaniline in the area of lithography. This will include the use of the polymer as a discharge layer for electron-beam lithography. E-beam lithography is capable of submicron resolution and has very accurate level to level pattern overlay; however, this precise registration is limited by charging of the imaging resist. We find that various conducting polyanilines can successfully prevent charging during e-beam patterning of resists, i.e. no pattern distortions are observed as compared to the case where a conducting material is not incorporated. The use of polyanilines as removable discharge layers for high resolution inspection and dimensional measurement of x-ray and optical masks by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) will also be presented. © 1991.