Interesting article. Again, they're saying that Sematech "made a mistake" in not supporting XRL:
For a variety of historical reasons, PXL was not well thought of in the U.S. semiconductor industry even though it had been under development since the early 1970s and had produced impressive device and circuit results in Japan and the United States. Its shortcomings included the need for a 1:1 mask, the perception that mask making was too costly, and the perception that extending PXL below 100 nm linewidths would require that the gap between the mask and the substrate be less than 10 µm, a worrisome prospect to semiconductor manufacturers. These concerns, along with the perception of high costs for a synchrotron X-ray source, deterred U.S. interest in PXL. Nonetheless, U.S. efforts — led by IBM — were at the forefront of the technology's development until 1999.
That year, at a workshop on NGL organized by International SEMATECH (Austin, Texas), a task force of 19 participants voted to provide support only for EUV and EPL. The effect of that decision has been to decimate PXL development in the United States; to adversely affect its infrastructure, which had earlier been at the leading edge as a result of investments by IBM and the U.S. government; and to effectively eliminate prospects for silicon semiconductor manufacturing with PXL in the United States. The extent to which misinformation relative to PXL played a role in that decision is still debated.
Betty |
