By Matt Wickenheiser
WaferNews Editor
International SEMATECH, Austin, TX, has placed the first purchase order for an MS-13 EUV Microstepper, to be built by Exitech, Oxford, England, and installed in SEMATECH’s Resist Test Center.
This new microexposure tool will help speed the development of resists for next generation post-optical lithography, SEMATECH reported. “By 2007, if we are to stay on the industry’s historic productivity curve, the manufacturing requirements of 16Gbit memory and 6GHz processor chips will call for photolithography on wafers with critical features sizes as small as 45- to 65nm,” said Malcolm Gower, chairman and technical director of Exitech. “Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography will help us achieve such fine critical dimension features.”
The Microstepper, which will be installed at SEMATECH during 4Q03, will incorporate a dense plasma focus discharge source developed by Cymer, San Diego, CA, with a wavelength of 13.5nm, as well as a 0.3NA EUV imaging lens designed and built by an EUV LLC team from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, and Carl Zeiss Semiconductor Manufacturing Technologies AG, Oberkochen, Germany. The tool is targeted to resolve minimum feature sizes of 35nm and below.