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Chipmakers, tool suppliers focus their efforts on photolithography advances

In a spate of recent announcements, several equipment suppliers, semiconductor manufacturers, and research organizations have said they are aggressively pursuing plans to advance photolithography's state of the art. Concerted efforts are underway in areas such as electron beam and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology. The companies and organizations involved in the technological breakthroughs include Lucent Technologies, Applied Materials, ASML, Silicon Valley Group, Ultratech Stepper, NIST, and the Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC).

On the e-beam front, Lucent, Applied, and ASML are working together to speed up development of Lucent's Scalpel system. Invented by Lucent's Bell Labs in 1989, the technology uses an electron beam instead of a light as a source to create patterns on the wafer. Last year the method received the endorsement of Sematech.

Scalpel will be ready to step in when optical lithography reaches its capability limits at the 100-nm feature level, according to Bell Labs. Researchers there say the technology will be suitable for use with linewidths 50 nm because the wavelength of an electron beam is several factors shorter than that of the UV light source used in traditional lithography tools. Other suppliers are working hard to develop the masks and photoresist for use with Scalpel, the partners say.

EUV lithography received a boost in January when Silicon Valley Group (SVG) announced at an industry meeting that the technology will beat the 2007 deadline for next-generation lithography tools set forth in SIA's National Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors. SVG claims its EUV system will be commercially available "well before" 2007. SVG made the announcement at the International Sematech Next-Generation Lithography Workshop in Colorado Springs, CO.

The toolmaker believes its 157-nm program, when combined with its advanced 193-nm technology, will offer the industry's most advanced lithography systems through 2000. In January SVG introduced a 193-nm step-and-scan system. EUV lithography is competing with Scalpel, ion beam, and x-ray technology as the method of choice for next-generation systems.

Furthermore, in what the company called "a strategic move," Ultratech Stepper joined SRC, the consortium of North American companies and government agencies established to foster pre-competitive university-based research. The decision gives the company access to a range of advanced research, Ultratech maintains, enabling the vendor to introduce new products more readily.

Finally, FSI International says it has joined NIST, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, and four universities in a collaboration to improve wafer pattern uniformity. National Semiconductor Corp. is heading the program with a grant from NIST. The project will use FSI's Polaris microlithography cluster tool to achieve line dimensions >150 nm using 248-nm lithography. The participating universities are Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, and Michigan. Several subcontractors are also involved.

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