July 15, 2009: Semiconductors are at the heart of what is deemed “nanotech” in the electronics manufacturing world, having been working at the submicron level for years. Some areas in this sector are right in Small Times‘ wheelhouse: MEMS is a prime example, and analytical equipment also is a broad area of overlap. We generally tend to let sister publication Solid State Technology do the technical heavy-lifting for leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing discussions, though.

But a presentation from lithography tool supplier ASML yesterday at the annual SEMICON West in San Francisco, CA, caught our ear, because it crosses both areas. The company’s concept of “holistic lithography” is taking shape with two new products and a heavily customized package, one of which is a new illumination technology that uses a programmable array of thousands of micromirrors (instead of the traditional illuminator and diffraction optical element) to condition and shape the light with greater flexibility to create increasingly complex patterns. The result is a much more flexible and powerful way to shape light in multiple different complex ways to improve device patterning, improve process windows, and extend use of immersion lithography tools as far as possible until the long-awaited extreme ultraviolet (EUV) tools are ready for volume manufacturing.

So there you have it — extending the current leading-edge semiconductor technology capabilities, brought to you by MEMS devices. — J.M.