Issue

As following Moore's Law steadily pushes the chipmaking envelope, process latitudes are being squeezed to their limits.

N.A. B-to-B inches up in February
The North American book-to-bill ratio increased in February to 0.87, up from January's final 0.81, according to reports from Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (Semi).

What would happen if EUV lithography were delayed, were too costly, or did not work at all? Would the feature shrink that has advanced Moore's Law end at 70nm? Not if clever optical lithographers have anything to say about it!

Flat panel displays (FPDs) will replace half of cathode ray tubes (CRTs) by 2005, according to Nikkei Microdevices estimates. Almost all personal computers will convert to liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors.

Several years ago, I invited James Womack — the renowned thinker on lean manufacturing — to tour our manufacturing operations. At the time, we were pulling ourselves out of a market nosedive and realized there had to be a better way to serve our customers, rather than operating in a fire-fighting mode.

These are gut-wrenching times for lithographers. They are pushing the limits of light deep into the sub-wavelength regime using resolution enhancement techniques (RETs). They're also struggling to devise future next-generation litho (NGL) systems based on shorter wavelengths, perhaps x-rays or electron beams. The status of the various contenders, plus the infrastructure to make them commercially viable, were probed at the recent SPIE Microlithography Symposium.

While the 2001 ITRS is a roadmap for sustaining IC technology, underlying manufacturing capabilities will be based on solutions from this industry's equipment, materials, and software suppliers. Negotiating potholes, detours, and even "red-flagged" roadblocks on the 2001 ITRS, executives from a broad range of industry suppliers highlight new solutions and breakthroughs that may make the road passable.

As device scaling continues to tighten process control requirements in advanced semiconductor manufacturing, a new challenge is emerging in the field of thermal processing. Pattern effects — arising from the effect of patterned thin film coatings on radiation heat transfer — can lead to process nonuniformity and defect generation.

Statistical process control has played a large role in semiconductor manufacturing, but sophisticated physically based models recently have revealed an underlying structure rather than random processes with unknown causes of variation. Now, advanced process control is emerging as the next level of controlling wafer fab effectiveness and a manufacturer's competitiveness.