Research and development is a cost-intensive process, and for chipmakers the cost is underscored by 12- to 15-year research pipelines and extreme market cycles. It is a highly competitive industry, driven by two-year product development cycles in which companies refresh the high end of their product lines every 18–24 months.
In today’s economic environment, technology decisions pose a high degree of investment risk — especially when a wrong bet can easily cost a company billions of dollars in time, resources and market valuation.
Some of the industry’s biggest risks are associated with the transition to next-generation technologies. This is especially true in lithography, where developing prototypes of in-demand tools can cost $200 million or more.
Cost concerns related to developing the next lithographic extension have left chip players uncertain of the future of next-generation lithography (NGL). There are four leading NGL candidates in the running for future process nodes — extreme ultraviolet (EUV), multi-electron-beam maskless, directed self-assembly, and nanoimprint lithography.
Currently, EUV lithography (EUVL) is considered the most feasible alternative technology because of the resolution afforded by its 13.5 nm wavelength and its cost-effective printing with single-exposure processing and high scanner throughput. However, substantial gaps exist for meeting the anticipated needs of EUVL production — specifically, the shortage of EUV-ready mask blanks, and the metrology tools necessary to detect defects on them.
The development of production-worthy metrology solutions is imperative to accelerating EUVL, and will give the industry a path for continuing to scale investments to the 22 nm half-pitch node and beyond.
Recognizing that a large-scale rejection of EUVL would negatively impact the industry, Sematech decided early this year to launch the EUVL Mask Infrastructure (EMI) partnership, an industry-wide consortium of EUV stakeholders, at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) of the University at Albany, to fund the development of metrology infrastructure to support EUV mask development.
The EMI has currently seven industry partners plus Sematech. The program scope includes three major infrastructure development projects: aerial image metrology system (AIMS), blank inspection (BI) and patterned mask inspection (PMI), in which Sematech facilitates consensus building among the partners, providing crucial data and a discussion forum for reaching conclusive agreements.Since its launch, Sematech’s EMI initiative has drawn interest from seven semiconductor industry entities to partner in funding approximtely $150 million for infrastructure development of EUV mask blank inspection, defect review, and patterned mask inspection hardware.
The development of defect-free EUV masks has been and continues to be the top priority for Sematech’s lithography division. More recently, Sematech partnered with Carl Zeiss to develop the first-ever high-resolution EUV defect review tool, an EUV Aerial Imaging (AIMS) system, that will collectively support the needs of the semiconductor industry and EUV stakeholders.
The AIMS platform is a critical tool for the development and manufacturing of defect-free EUVL masks targeted at the 22 nm technology node and beyond, and Sematech is projecting that it will be commercially available in early 2014, in line with the expected introduction of EUV lithography into high-volume manufacturing by 2015.
Lithography is now at a critical juncture; the industry needs to make a giant leap into a new technology direction to overcome the plateauing value of the current technology. Few companies can do it all on their own — so orchestrated collaboration is becoming a core discipline, and a key differentiator. The new collaborations in EUV are based on the premise that EUVL is not a way for companies to gain competitive advantage over one another. Instead, it’s a technology that must be addressed collaboratively across the entire supply chain, or it won’t be available to anyone.
Collaboration is key to save R&D expenditures — often years and millions of dollars — and support the development of next-generation lithography, the foundation of nanoelectronics and other emerging technologies.
— Sematech Lithography