The 2011 International Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUVL) and Lithography Extensions (LE) Symposia, which was jointly organised by EIDC, IMEC and Sematech has brought out the technological advancements, challenges and infrastructure issues in the EUVL industry.
The symposia also discussed the ability of the market to introduce EUVL into manufacturing at the 22 nm half pitch node.
Various progresses in the industry were also discussed in detail such as the shipment of EUV scanners last year and the enhancement of pilot lines to accommodate initial product use on important layers by the year 2013. With many chip manufacturers now using EUVL in their fabs the industry is facing a challenge of increasing EUVL production. As part of the Symposium, Joshua Li from NVIDIA spoke about challenges in design for lithography technologies to match the performance of fabless company devices and the targets of costs for manufacturing below 20 nm. Han Ku Cho from Samsung spoke about the readiness of EUVL lithography, the requirements in terms of performance for large scale manufacturing in DRAM products by 2013.
Partners and researchers of Sematech also discussed about the importance of the consortium in enabling important technical advances in understanding and reducing defects in mask manufacturing, and enabling breakthrough development of materials resistant to EUV. The Lithography Extensions Symposium highlighted aspects such as Directed Self-Assembly and using this to improve the patterning abilities of current lithography systems. The Symposium is part of the Sematech Knowledge series, which is a set of industry based meetings aimed to increase knowledge on semiconductor research and development globally.
Source: http://www.sematech.com