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Luminescent
Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of computational lithography solutions
to the global semiconductor industry, has broadened its portfolio by adding
the industry's first offline computational inspection product to its solutions
set. With its existing portfolio of advanced computational lithography solutions,
the move represents a natural extension of Luminescent's expertise into the
critical area of photomask inspection. A premier company in Asia is the first
customer to qualify the new computational defect review product in volume production.
During the photomask inspection process, operators manually sort through and
evaluate defect
images to determine if the photomask will result in the desired wafer print.
This is time
consuming, and since the process is subject to operator variability, it is often
inconsistent and
unreliable. Luminescent's computational solution provides automated mask
defect review
and dispositioning based on aerial images of the photomask. The product accepts
images
from commonly used mask defect inspection and review tools, enhances the images,
and
quickly and accurately determines if the defects are critical or not. Operator
errors are
eliminated and defect review cycle time is significantly reduced, in some instances
by greater
than 75 percent.
"The expedited qualification of our new computational defect review product
demonstrates the
importance of computational inspection in mask shops today and in the future,"
said Dr. Moris
Kori, President and CEO of Luminescent. "Computational inspection, along
with computational
lithography, validates our assertion that, for the first time in the history
of the semiconductor
industry, Moore's law is being enabled by software innovation rather than
advances in
hardware-centric lithography and mask inspection technologies."
Computational defect review opens a broader field which Luminescent calls computational
lithography and inspection (CLI). Computational lithography (or computational
scaling) uses
mathematical models to improve the resolution of light across a critical layer
of an integrated
circuit (IC). It has become the most viable and economic approach for extending
optical
lithography for several generations. Computational inspection integrates with
computational
lithography by using similar mathematical approaches to filter for photomask
defects by
simulating pattern errors on final silicon.
Luminescent provides computational lithography and inspection solutions to
the semiconductor
industry. Luminescent is a privately-held, venture-backed company based in Palo
Alto,
California.
Posted July 23rd, 2009
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