https://nanyte.com/photoresists/az-eci-3027 · last updated 2026-07-26
- Manufacturer
- Merck (AZ Electronic Materials)
- Tone
- positive
- Chemistry
- DNQ-novolak
- Thickness
- 2.4–4.4 µm
- Exposure dose
- 262 mJ/cm² at 365 nm
- Developer
- AZ 726MIF
- Applications
- Etch mask · Electroplating / molding · General prototyping
Cross-checked — two independent extractions agree on the spin curve and the single-value figures.
- Substrate
- Resist
- Exposed
Spin coating
Data points
| Series | rpm | µm |
|---|---|---|
| AZ ECI 3027 as supplied | 1500 | 4.4 |
| 2000 | 3.8 | |
| 3000 | 3.1 | |
| 4000 | 2.7 | |
| 5000 | 2.4 |
Values are the manufacturer’s starting points, not a guarantee — characterize on your own tool. Series digitized from a published figure are approximate (±10 %).
read from figure, "SPIN CURVES (150mm Wafers)" chart, p.1 of AZ ECI 3000 Series Technical Datasheet (Merck, Rev. 03/21); AZ ECI 3027 identified by its purple/violet legend marker (topmost curve), distinct from AZ ECI 3007 (blue, bottom curve) and AZ ECI 3012 (red/magenta, middle curve) plotted on the same axes.
- Datasheet does not state spin ramp/acceleration, dispense volume, or static vs dynamic dispense for the spin-curve chart.
- Spin coating is named as one of several compatible coating methods (spray and roller coating are also mentioned, p.10 COATING) but no method-specific parameters are published beyond that.
- No edge-bead-removal recipe is given, only that AZ EBR Solvent or AZ EBR 70/30 are the companion EBR products (p.2).
- Adhesion
- HMDS recommended — "Oxide forming substrates (Si, etc.) should be primed with HMDS (hexamethyl disilazane) or other suitable primer prior to coating AZ ECI 3000.1
Soft bake
- Soft bake
- 100 °C (90–110 °C) · 60 s · hotplate
- Notes
- This is the REFERENCE PROCESS condition for AZ ECI 3027 (2.5 µm film on bare Si) on p.4, using a proximity hotplate.
SOURCE: REFERENCE PROCESS (Dense lines in AZ ECI 3027 Photoresist), p.4; TYPICAL PROCESS, p.1
Exposure dose
The manufacturer publishes 262 mJ/cm² at 365 nm. Dose scales with film thickness and depends on your optics, so treat it as a starting point and run a dose array.
- Dose at 365 nm
- 262 mJ/cm²
- Dose at 405 nm
- Not published — characterize on-tool
- As published
- 262 mJ/cm² i-line is the nominal for a 2.5 µm film developed in AZ 726MIF; drop to about 240 mJ/cm² if you develop in AZ 300MIF instead.
- Post-exposure bake
- 120 °C · 60 s
SOURCE: REFERENCE PROCESS (Dense lines in AZ ECI 3027 Photoresist), p.4
Development
- Developer
- AZ 726MIF
- Time
- 60 s
- Method
- puddle
- Developer family
- TMAH or buffered alkaline
Not published for this resist: Dilution, Rinse — characterize on-tool.
SOURCE: REFERENCE PROCESS (Dense lines in AZ ECI 3027 Photoresist), p.4 ("Develop: AZ 726MIF, 60s single puddle @ 23°C")
Hard bake, etch & strip
- Hard bake
- 100–115 °C
- Etch resistance
- Datasheet demonstrates wet-etch adhesion/profile retention for AZ ECI 3012 (a different, thinner grade in the same series, not AZ ECI 3027 specifically) through an ITO etch (FeCl3/HCl, 70s @ 45°C, on a 200nm ITO film) and a thermal-oxide etch (6 min @ 22°C, on a 690nm oxide film), both shown with SEM cross-sections retaining resist profile (WET ETCH ADHESION CHARACTERISTICS, p.8).
- Stripper
- AZ 100 Remover, AZ 300T, AZ 400T, or AZ Kwik Strip — removers designed for DNQ/novolac type photoresists.2
Not published for this resist: Descum, Storage — characterize on-tool.
SOURCE: PROCESS CONSIDERATIONS / HARD BAKE, p.10
Where it's used
Practical notes from the datasheet
AZ ECI 3027 is the thickest grade in Merck's AZ ECI 3000 series, a general-purpose, high-throughput positive DNQ/novolak cross-over resist explicitly usable at both i-line (365 nm) and g-line (436 nm), marketed for plasma/RIE and wet-etch masking (the DNQ/novolak classification comes directly from the datasheet's own stripper-compatibility statement, p.10). Unlike AZ ECI 3007/3012 (documented elsewhere in this datasheet at ~1.2 µm film with resolution down to 0.4 µm lines/0.5 µm holes), the dedicated AZ ECI 3027 reference process (p.4) is run at 2.5 µm film thickness — 100°C/60s soft bake, i-line exposure at 262 mJ/cm² nominal (0.54NA, 0.6s, Nikon stepper; ~240 mJ/cm² if developing with AZ 300MIF instead of the AZ 726MIF actually used), 120°C/60s PEB, and a 60s AZ 726MIF single-puddle develop at 23°C — and resolves dense lines down to roughly 0.60 µm at that dose, per the p.4 Dense Line Linearity chart. The series-wide 'production resolution to 0.4µm' headline claim (p.1) applies to the thinner grades' reference processes, not to AZ ECI 3027 at its documented 2.5 µm thickness. On the p.1 multi-grade spin-speed chart (ECI 3007/3012/3027 plotted together), the AZ ECI 3027 curve was identified by its distinct purple/violet legend marker as the topmost (thickest) curve; the reported points are a figure read, not a printed table, and warrant a visual QC pass against the source chart. Soft bake, PEB, and hard bake are also given as series-wide ranges (90-110°C, 105-115°C, 100-115°C respectively) in the generic TYPICAL PROCESS/PROCESS CONSIDERATIONS sections — the reference-process values above were preferred where available since they are resist- and thickness-specific.
Grades in this family
Other grades in the AZ ECI 3000 series line differ mainly in coating thickness:
| Grade | Thickness | Exposure dose |
|---|---|---|
| AZ ECI 3007 | 0.6–1.1 µm | — |
| AZ ECI 3012 | 1.1–1.9 µm | 220 mJ/cm² @ 436 nm |
| AZ ECI 3027 (this page) | 2.4–4.4 µm | 262 mJ/cm² @ 365 nm |
Sources & disclaimer
- Merck (AZ Electronic Materials) — AZ ECI 3027 datasheet (Rev. (03/21)) · accessed 2026-07-10
- SUBSTRATE PREPARATION, p.10. (A p.8 example process for AZ ECI 3012 — a different grade in this series — separately used 'HMDS vapor' as the primer ahead of an oxide-etch adhesion test, consistent with this recommendation, but that example is not AZ ECI 3027-specific.)
- STRIPPING, p.10.
- Lipp et al.. Aperture-Controlled Fabrication of All-Dielectric Structural Color Pixels. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2023). doi:10.1021/acsami.3c03353A 750 nm AZ ECI 3007 film was patterned on a maskless writer to control aperture geometry and tune all-dielectric structural colour.
Manufacturer datasheet values are starting points; optimal parameters depend on your substrate, equipment and environment. Product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners. NANYTE is not affiliated with the manufacturers listed. Last updated 2026-07-26.