SPIE Advanced Lithography + Patterning

SPIE Advanced Lithography + Patterning
by Admin on 09-25-2023 at 4:35 pm

Share your research, challenges, and breakthroughs with colleagues in San Jose

The call for papers is open. Submit your abstract and join other leading researchers who are solving challenges in optical and EUV lithography, patterning technologies, metrology, and process integration for semiconductor manufacturing and … Read More


Calibre IC Manufacturing papers at SPIE 2023

Calibre IC Manufacturing papers at SPIE 2023
by Daniel Nenni on 03-07-2023 at 6:00 am

SPIE 2023 San Jose

The Siemens Calibre group was very busy last week at SPIE. Calling Calibre industry leading really is an understatement. Calibre is one of the reasons Moore’s Law has continued to this day. This tool is legendary. You can get more information on the Calibre landing page including product information, resource guide, blogs

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The Challenge of Working with EUV Doses

The Challenge of Working with EUV Doses
by Fred Chen on 10-25-2021 at 2:00 pm

The Challenge of Working with EUV Doses

Recently, a patent application from TSMC [1] revealed target EUV doses used in the range of 30-45 mJ/cm2. However, it was also acknowledged in the same application that such doses were too low to prevent defects and roughness. Recent studies [2,3] have shown that by considering photon density along with blur, the associated shot… Read More


Stochastic Effects from Photon Distribution Entropy in High-k1 EUV Lithography

Stochastic Effects from Photon Distribution Entropy in High-k1 EUV Lithography
by Fred Chen on 08-04-2021 at 10:00 am

Stochastic Effects from Photon Distribution Entropy in High k1 EUV Lithography

Recent advances in EUV lithography have largely focused on “low-k1” imaging, i.e., features with pitches less than the wavelength divided by the numerical aperture (k1<0.5). With a nominal wavelength of 13.5 nm and a numerical aperture of 0.33, this means sub-40 nm pitches. It is naturally expected that larger… Read More


Stochastic Origins of EUV Feature Edge Roughness

Stochastic Origins of EUV Feature Edge Roughness
by Fred Chen on 07-11-2021 at 10:00 am

Stochastic Origins of EUV Feature Edge Roughness

Due to the higher energy of EUV (13.3-13.7 nm wavelength) compared to ArF (193 nm wavelength) light, images produced by EUV are more susceptible to photon shot noise.

Figure 1. (Left) 40 nm dense (half-pitch) line image projected onto wafer at 35 mJ/cm2; (Right) 20 nm dense (half-pitch) line image projected onto wafer at 70 mJ/cm2.Read More


SPIE 2021 – ASML DUV and EUV Updates

SPIE 2021 – ASML DUV and EUV Updates
by Scotten Jones on 03-17-2021 at 10:00 am

SPIE DUV 2021 ASML NXT4 DryWet Presentation final noWPD2 Page 42

At the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference held in February, ASML presented the latest information on their Deep Ultraviolet (DUV) and Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) exposure systems. I recently got to interview Mike Lercel of ASML to discuss the presentations.

DUV

Despite all the attention EUV is getting, most layers are still… Read More


How Line Cuts Became Necessarily Separate Steps in Lithography

How Line Cuts Became Necessarily Separate Steps in Lithography
by Fred Chen on 12-08-2020 at 10:00 am

How Line Cuts Became Necessarily Separate Steps in Lithography

Pretty much all the semiconductor nodes in the last two decades have had at least one layer where the minimum pitch pushes the limitation of the state-of-the-art lithography tool, with a k1 factor < 0.5, i.e., the half-pitch is less than 0.5*wavelength/numerical aperture. A number of published reports [1-4] have touched upon… Read More


Impact of Defocus and Illumination on Imaging of Pitch

Impact of Defocus and Illumination on Imaging of Pitch
by Fred Chen on 10-26-2020 at 10:00 am

Impact of Defocus

In an earlier article [1], the resolution limit for the space between paired features was described by the Rayleigh criterion of ~0.6 wavelength/numerical aperture, where the numerical aperture (NA) represented the sine of the largest angle for a ray focused from the lens to a point. It is also given by the radius of the lens divided… Read More