EUV lithography

Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) technology and infrastructure development has made excellent progress over the past several years, and tool suppliers are delivering alpha tools to customers. However, requirements in source, mask, optics, and resist are very challenging, and significant development efforts are still needed to support beta and production-level performance. Some of the important advances in the past few years include increased source output power, tool and optics system development and integration, and mask blank defect reduction. For example, source power has increased to levels approaching specification, but reliable source operation at these power levels has yet to be fully demonstrated. Significant efforts are also needed to achieve the resolution, line width roughness, and photospeed requirements for EUV photoresists. Cost of ownership and extendibility to future nodes are key factors in determining the outlook for the manufacturing insertion of EUVL. Since wafer throughput is a critical cost factor, source power, resist sensitivity, and system design all need to be carefully considered. However, if the technical and business challenges can be met, then EUVL will be the likely technology of choice for semiconductor manufacturing at the 32, 22, 16 and 11 nm half-pitch nodes. 2006 Academic des sciences. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.