Effect of prebake conditions on dissolution of Hoechst AG positive chemically amplified resist AZ-PF514 has been studied. It was shown that the dissolution of the resist was nonlinear, with the retardation time strongly dependent on prebake conditions. Plasma etching of the top layer of the resist has been proposed in order to eliminate undesirably long development retardation time of the high temperature baked resist. It was shown that the roughness of the developing resist film was caused by the surface layer of low solubility.