February 28, 2011 — At the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, Luc Van den hove, president and CEO of imec, announced during his keynote speech that imec has started the installation of ASML’s pre-production extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) scanner, the NXE:3100, in its Leuven, Belgium facility.
Luc Van den hove, president/CEO of imec, summarized key themes from his keynote in a podcast interview with SST senior technical editor Debra Vogler: Download (iPod/iPhone users) or Play Now
The installation of the NXE:3100 lithography product, featuring a considerably higher source power and optimized optics, underscores imec’s ambition to bring EUVL to production level. With the installation of ASML’s NXE:3100, imec’s EUVL research program moves to the preproduction stage, shifting the focus from mainly an infrastructure study to include now also a manufacturability study. The NXE:3100 at imec uses a discharge produced plasma (DPP) EUV light source from Extreme Technologies (Ushio). At comparable process conditions, the NXE:3100 has recently demonstrated a throughput performance increase of a factor of 20 over the EUV Alpha Demo Tool at imec. This increase is based on increased power, higher transmission and dual stages.
Click here to listen to an interview about the new NXE:3100 installation with imec’s Kurt Ronse.
Imec’s EUVL research program will tackle scanner-specific issues correlated to the difference between EUV lithography and optical lithography through the integration of 14nm logic and 2xnm and 1xnm memory processes. Research will also focus on resists that allow to optimally exploit the resolution of EUV by tackling line-edge roughness and pattern collapse, and on reticle defectivity.
"ASML’s NXE:3100…will enable us to continue to offer our partners the research they need to bring EUVL to production," said Van den hove. "As reflected in some of our 28 papers at the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference this week, together with our partners, we have achieved important progress in EUV resists and reticle defectivity," added Kurt Ronse, director of the lithography department at imec.
View the movie of the arrival of the NXE:3100 at imec: http://www.youtube.com/imecnanotube
Imec performs world-leading research in nanoelectronics. Learn more at www.imec.be
More from SPIE Advanced Lithography 2011:
- Brewer Science launches immersion lithography products with OptiStack
- Editorial coverage at SPIE Advanced Lithography
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