Andrew,
Interesting story about SVGI giving IBM a working X-Ray stepper.
I thought that this type of technology was at least a decade away!
Any comments / insights / guesses would be appreciated.
- Time to become a commercially useful product
- Mask making issues / capabilities
- Other process tools capable of operating at X-Ray feature sizes
- Chemistry issues??
- Any good places/sites to research the issues
In advance, thanks.
Ian.
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IBM successfully tests SVGL X-ray system on 1-Gbit structures
By Jack Robertson
DANA POINT, Calif. -- IBM Corp.'s Advanced Lithography Facility at Hopewell Junction, N.Y. is using a special X-ray
lithography aligner and stepper built by SVG Lithography to demonstrate a potential 1-Gbit DRAM process, according to
researchers attending a conference here.
IBM engineering researcher A. C. Chen told the Electron, Ion and Photon Beam and Nanofabrication Conference that tests
have demonstrated the system being capable of making 0.18-micron feature sizes needed in 1-Gbit memories.
Simultaneously, IBM is also developing an 0.18-micron process using 248-nanometer wavelength, excimer laser deep-UV
lithography. Sources said IBM has made no decision which of the two lithography technologies it will use to make the
next-generation DRAM.
The SVGL X-ray stepper and aligner is separate the company's mainline Micrascan step-and-scan optical lithography system.
Wilton, Conn.-based SVGL has been supplying Micrascan systems to IBM's memory plant in Burlington, Vt. An alliance
between IBM, Toshiba and Siemens has also developed a 256-Mbit DRAM using SVGL's Micrascan-II optical
step-and-scan system.
Chen said the X-ray stepper and aligner are modified from the SVGL optical systems. The aligner uses an X-ray detector an
optical target in addition to position the X-ray mask precisely. |
