Pioneering Development of Immersion Lithography

NEC Electronics has pioneered the development of the immersion lithography technology in order to deal with micro-fabrication from the 65nm logic to the 55nm logic and after. Instead of air, the immersion technology introduces water between the lens and wafer of the exposure system for use in fabricating the circuit pattern and this makes it possible to improve the resolution and to fabricate finer patterns than have been achieved hitherto. NEC Electronics has completed the material development, exposure system development and process optimization for this technology and the process is currently being applied to mass-production of the 300mm wafer production line at the NEC Semiconductors Yamagata factory.