Some of the major limitations of top surface imaging schemes are now well documented: critical dimension (CD) control across the wafer can be a serious issue as well as line edge roughness. A primary focus of our work has been to investigate the performance of the 248 nm bilevel negative tone approach of the chemical vapor deposition photoresist process based on the plasma polymerization of methylsilane. In this article, CD control data within a field and across the wafer are presented, CD control is shown to be very strongly dependent on the uniformity of the development step. The best results are obtained when using straight chlorine for the plasma etch development step.