Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Company (TWSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) and MAPPER Lithography today revealed that
a pre-alpha MAPPER tool located on TSMC's Fab 12 GigaFab™ is repeatedly
printing features previously unachievable using current immersion lithography
technology.
Over the past several months TSMC has expanded its Maskless Lithography team
and has been working with MAPPER engineers at Fab 12 to integrate electron beam
direct write capabilities into manufacturing processes for development of future
technology nodes.
“TSMC is always searching for the most cost effective manufacturing processes,”
says Dr. Shang-Yi Chiang, TSMC Senior Vice President of Research & Development.
“The results coming from our project with MAPPER have met aggressive objectives
and mark a significant achievement in our Multiple-E-Beam Direct Write program
that covers all viable Multiple-E-Beam technologies. Based on these encouraging
results, we are convinced that the Multiple E-Beam technology is one of the
technologies to become the future lithography standard.”
Dr. Christopher Hegarty, MAPPER's CEO adds, “Having TSMC as our
launch customer is of great benefit to MAPPER. Now that we have an operational
tool at TSMC and we simultaneously intensify our efforts in bringing MAPPER's
technology to market, we are supremely confident that electron beam direct write
will be successfully introduced into high-volume manufacturing processes.”
TSMC and MAPPER will present their latest results at the SPIE Advanced Lithography
2010 conference in San Jose, CA.
MAPPER's Technology
MAPPER develops lithography machines for the chip industry. These machines utilize
a new and innovative technology with which the chips of the future can be made
cost effectively. MAPPER´s machine provides a highly cost-effective way
of making the next generation of chips because it significantly reduces costs
by eliminating the photomask while simultaneously providing the ultimate in
resolution and high productivity. MAPPER's technology makes use of massively
parallel electron beams, thereby providing the very high resolution of electron
beam at extremely high throughput. Current lithography machines use photographic
techniques to create minute electrical circuits smaller than 1/100th of a human
hair on a silicon wafer. They use a mask that contains the blueprint of the
chip and transfer this pattern on to a photosensitive layer (comparable to a
photograph being exposed on film), however the photographic techniques used
are very limited in the resolution they can provide and are no longer adequate
for future generations of semiconductors.
TSMC is the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, providing
the industry's leading process technology and the foundry's largest
portfolio of process-proven libraries, IPs, design tools and reference flows.
The Company's managed capacity in 2009 totaled 9.96 million (8-inch equivalent)
wafers, including capacity from two advanced 12-inch GIGAFABs™, four eight-inch
fabs, one six-inch fab, as well as TSMC's wholly owned subsidiaries, WaferTech
and TSMC China, and its joint venture fab, SSMC. TSMC is the first foundry to
provide 40nm production capabilities. Its corporate headquarters are in Hsinchu,
Taiwan.