Jan 21 2008
FUJIFILM Corporation today announced the purchase of an advanced argon fluoride (ArF) immersion scanner for FUJIFILM Electronic Materials, a subsidiary of FUJIFILM and a leading global supplier of photoresists, developers, cleaners & removers, polyimides and thin film chemicals and equipment for the semiconductor industry. By making this investment, Fujifilm proves again it’s commitment to the semiconductor industry and allows the company to bring its recently announced FAiRS-9000™ family of ArF immersion photoresists to high-volume manufacturing faster. FAiR™ technology eliminates the need for a protective topcoat film, enabling large semiconductor manufacturers to further reduce their cost of ownership at the 45 and 32 nm production nodes by simplifying the lithographic process.
Eliminating the traditional protective topcoat film from the lithographic process improves productivity and reduces manufacturing costs. Additionally, the FAiR™ technology will help advance semiconductor producers’ 45nm node design and manufacturing capability, which is estimated to begin in 2010. Smaller circuit design will significantly increase the number of semiconductors produced on each silicon wafer. Today, mass production processes are generating chips at the 65nm node.
“Acquisition of this toolset is essential to achieve high market-share in this very competitive technology area,” said Keiji Mihayashi, President and CEO, FUJIFILM Electronic Materials U.S.A., Inc. “In combination with the FAiR™ technology, we will accelerate our presence in the market by leveraging these advances in topcoat-free technology and by extending them to new high-quality photoresists being developed for 32nm manufacturing.”
Fujifilm’s acquisition of the ArF immersion exposure tool and state-of-the-art lithography cell will enable Fujifilm to continuously evaluate ArF immersion photoresists and respond quickly to customer engineering and design requests using the same toolsets that are being acquired by customer manufacturing plants.
The ArF immersion exposure tool is compatible with 45 and 32 nm node immersion lithography processes that use an argon fluoride laser as a light source to form the circuit patterns in very precise semiconductor devices of 45nm and smaller dimensions. This process improves optical resolution by using water to fill the gap between exposure projection lens and the photoresist film that is coated on a silicon substrate.
Learn more about FUJIFILM Electronic Materials advanced lithographic technology at www.fujifilm-ffem.com.