High NA EUV patterning ecosystem readiness to continue the logic scaling roadmap

0.33 Numerical Aperture [NA) EUV Lithography has been introduced in high volume manufacturing since the beginning of this decade. This was initiated by the logic foundries at the 7nm technology node, focusing on a few layers in the back-end-of-line. In the following nodes, more layers were converted to EUV but very soon also EUV double patterning became necessary. The logic step to avoid double patterning was to increase the NA from 0.33 to 0.55. Although EUV resists and masks are being used in production today, further patterning infrastructure improvements are mandatory to enable High Volume Manufacturing [HVM] with high NA EUV. In this presentation, the preparations for EUV resists, EUV underlayers, EUV metrology, EUV masks and pellicles will be explained and their readiness assessed.