Photo Credit: R&DThe world’s most advanced extreme-ultraviolet microscope is about to go online at the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), and the queue of semiconductor companies waiting to use it already stretches out the door.
The much-anticipated SHARP microscope (SEMATECH High-NA Actinic Recticle review Project) was conceived and built by scientists at Berkeley Lab’s Center for X-ray Optics (CXRO) and will provide semiconductor companies with the means to push their chip-making technology to new levels of miniaturization and complexity. The instrument is housed at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at Berkeley Lab.
SHARP replaces an older tool, also located at the ALS, and has been many years in the making. Kenneth Goldberg, a researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Div., and deputy directory of CXRO, runs the project.
“With the old tool we suffered greatly just to squeeze good results from it,” says Goldberg. “We always talked about what we’d do if we had the chance to do it right.”
Goldberg and his colleagues got that chance thanks to a partnership with SEMATECH, a consortium of semiconductor companies and chip-makers who recognized in CXRO the ideal combination of resources and expertise. Those companies are interested in developing EUV fabrication techniques in order to shrink circuit elements in their computer chips down to a few nanometers in size—five to ten times smaller than they are today.
In semiconductor fabrication, circuits of silicon are made via photolithography. READ MORE
MySemiconDailyTV interviewed Dan Armbrust, President & CEO of SEMATECH in advance of SEMICON West 2013, where he will be a presenter at the R&D Panel: “A conversation on the future of semiconductor manufacturing” (Wednesday July 10 from 10:00AM-11:00AM). Because the semiconductor industry faces a growing chorus of competing interests and economic realities, i.e., near parallel introductions of new transistor architectures, new channel materials, optical lithography extensions and EUV lithography, 450mm wafers, and stacked 3D ICs, it has to find more efficient ways to accomplish R&D. “It would certainly be convenient if we could narrow our focus to fewer of the things we need to do,” Armbrust told MSDTV. “Unfortunately, we need to do them all.” The necessity, he explains, is driven by customer expectations for continued advancements in power, performance, and lower cost. “As an industry, if we’re going to stay on the growth curve we’ve been on and remain vital, we’re going to have to solve all of the problems.”
The challenges facing the industry have a common denominator — they are difficult, complex, and have a fair amount of uncertainty, both technical and economic. “We need to respond to that uncertainty challenge by coordinating better across the entire industry,” said Armbrust. “And that means, wherever possible, reducing redundancies and eliminating waste.” He also pointed out that the timing has to be correct, i.e., when each challenge is addressed, how solutions are introduced, and getting to volume manufacturing much faster than in the past.
With the price points of consumer electronics — especially mobile devices — continuing to be under pressure, semiconductor manufacturers will continue to be challenged with leveraging their participation in R&D consortia ever more efficiently. And consortia will have to adapt accordingly. What doesn’t change is that, as usual, consortia will be working to bring the industry to a consensus and prioritizing actions, as well as identifying infrastructure gaps and addressing them. “The entire supply chain is under pressure to continuously adapt – and to prepare the technology with much more significant up front investment,” said Armbrust. The “why” gets back to uncertainty he pointed out. “If you look at the device roadmap — there’s significant questions about what happens — what’s the next big step as we get closer to the end of scaling as we’re used to it. Similarly, when each new technology will be introduced has a fair amount of uncertainty around it and a lot of people in the industry are talking about how the changes should be sequenced, and the interaction between them.” The degree of technical uncertainty is compounded by the economic uncertainty, i.e., can the changes be introduced while continuing to drive down costs.
To help deal with the uncertainty, Armbrust suggests the industry can get some inspiration from its roots. After all, in the beginning, the semiconductor industry was a bunch of start-ups that had restrictions on resources and were under constant time pressure. SEMATECH has been looking at what start-ups are doing today and applying the lessons learned to the dynamic semiconductor industry environment. “If we’re quick on our feet, we’ll be able to pick the right problems, and work on them when they matter, and pull the industry together in a way that makes sense…quickness and speed will matter.”
Photo Credit: R&DThe world’s most advanced extreme-ultraviolet microscope is about to go online at the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), and the queue of semiconductor companies waiting to use it already stretches out the door.