The present invention is directed towards contact planarization methods
that can be used to planarize substrate surfaces having a wide range of
topographic feature densities for lithography applications. These
processes use thermally curable, photo-curable, or thermoplastic
materials to provide globally planarized surfaces over topographic
substrate surfaces for lithography applications. Additional coating(s)
with global planarity and uniform thickness can be obtained on the
planarized surfaces. These inventive methods can be utilized with
single-layer, bilayer, or multi-layer processing involving bottom
anti-reflective coatings, photoresists, hardmasks, and other organic and
inorganic polymers in an appropriate coating sequence as required by the
particular application. More specifically, this invention produces
globally planar surfaces for use in dual damascene and bilayer processes
with greatly improved photolithography process latitude. The invention
further provides globally planar surfaces to transfer patterns using
imprint lithography, nano-imprint lithography, hot-embossing lithography
and stamping pattern transfer techniques.