March 4, 2008 — Semiconductor chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), working together with its research partner IBM, announced it has produced a working test chip utilizing extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for the critical first layer of metal connections across the entire chip.

Earlier projects utilizing EUV to produce working chip components were only “narrow field,” covering just a very small portion of the design. The work was a collaboration between of AMD, IBM, and their partners at the UAlbany NanoCollege’s Albany NanoTech Complex.

The paper shows successful integration of “full-field” EUV lithography into the fabrication process across an entire 22 mm x 33 mm AMD 45 nm node test chip.

“This important demonstration of EUV lithography’s potential to be used in semiconductor manufacturing in the coming years is encouraging to all of us in the industry that benefit from chip feature sizes shrinking over time,” said Bruno La Fontaine of AMD.

“Although there is still a lot of work to be done before the industry can use EUV lithography in high volume production, AMD has shown it can be integrated successfully in a semiconductor fabrication flow to produce the first layer of metal interconnects across a full chip.”