Cymer qualifies and ships new argon fluoride light source

Cymer, a developer of lithography light sources used by chipmakers to pattern advanced semiconductor chips, today announced the first shipment of the newly qualified XLR 800ix light source that improves performance and productivity, as well as lowers cost-of-ownership for leading-edge argon fluoride (ArF) immersion lithography systems.

Several leading semiconductor manufacturers received early access upgrades to the XLR 800ix and their performance exceeded specifications, achieving less than two femtometers total bandwidth variation in every exposure field. This is about 10 times better than existing technology used today.

As chipmakers extend the use of ArF immersion light sources with multi-patterning to the sub-10 nm technology nodes, it becomes increasingly critical to reduce variability across all processes. In partnership with chipmakers, Cymer found that lower bandwidth variation can lead to lower critical dimension (CD) variation, which improves patterning performance both within and wafer-to-wafer. The XLR 800ix introduces new bandwidth stabilization technology, enabling an eight times improvement in bandwidth measurement fidelity, which can be used to tightly control bandwidth stability.

“We are seeing a strong pull to upgrade our installed base light sources to the newest configuration because the XLR 800ix’s performance far exceeds customers’ expectations,” said David Knowles, vice president of the product development group at Cymer. “From technology improvements to application enhancements, the XLR 800ix brings together all our strengths into one platform to deliver powerful results for our customers.”

The XLR 800ix also delivers productivity and cost-of-ownership improvements, enabling a 33% increase in time between service intervals to 40 billion pulses. This is driven by Cymer’s new field-tested chamber and optics modules, which are in production in more than 250 XLR systems. These enhancements also support Cymer’s sustainability initiatives, by lowering total system power consumption by several percentage points.

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