KLA-Tencor Teams With Carl Zeiss SMT to Reduce Costs and Speed Development Time on Next-Generation Photomasks
Wednesday September 3, 5:00 pm ET
Alliance Between These Two Industry Leaders to Help Improve Mask Quality Control and Process Monitoring for the Sub-100-nm Technology Nodes
SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- KLA-Tencor (Nasdaq: KLAC - News) and Carl Zeiss Microelectronic Systems, a Carl Zeiss SMT subsidiary, announced today that they have established a strategic alliance to help the semiconductor industry reduce costs and speed time to market on next-generation photomasks for the 90-nm and below technology nodes. Company officials report that the joint-development effort is expected to provide customers with the most comprehensive and cost-effective solution available to detect, review and disposition defects on advanced reticles. As a result, photomask manufacturers and chipmakers alike will be able to rapidly identify, source and resolve defect issues to accelerate mask development and improve mask quality control throughout the production process.
With today's lithography strategies driving escalating photomask complexity, chipmakers require defect-free masks to eliminate the risk of both traditional defects that will print at the wafer fab upon first use, and progressive defects that may arise throughout the reticle lifecycle. As the leaders in reticle inspection and review, respectively, KLA-Tencor and Carl Zeiss SMT hold the keys to producing these zero-defect reticles. By teaming together, the two companies will work jointly toward fully integrating reticle inspection, testing, metrology, review and defect dispositioning and, thereby, dramatically improve the productivity and efficiency of leading-edge photomask quality control strategies in volume-production environments.
"By combining their complementary technologies to provide a joint solution to the semiconductor industry, KLA-Tencor and Carl Zeiss SMT expect to enhance the efficiency of mask manufacturers by decreasing manufacturing costs and development time," stated Dr. Markus Dilger, general manager and managing director of the Advanced Mask Technology Center (AMTC), a Dresden, Germany-based joint-venture company owned by Infineon Technologies, AMD and DuPont Photomasks, Inc.
The semiconductor industry's escalating mask challenges
Photomask inspection is now, more than ever, paramount to the successful development and production of high-quality photomasks. The resolution enhancement technologies being deployed to extend the life of 248-nm and 193-nm lithography tools are driving the adoption of increasingly complex mask features that have a greater likelihood of printing yield-limiting defects during IC fabrication. The intricacies involved in both producing and inspecting these complex photomask sets are causing photomask turn-times and costs to skyrocket due to longer mask write-times and dramatically increased rework.
"To sustain their competitive advantage, our customers need photomask inspection and review strategies that will minimize the chances of having a printing defect that can put their devices at risk," explained Lance Glasser, vice president and general manager of KLA-Tencor's Reticle and Photomask Inspection Division. "That means understanding what defects matter, when they matter and how they matter so that you can quickly and thoroughly eliminate all of the defects that could be lithographically significant, electrically significant or process significant."
The combined power of two industry leaders
Within the alliance, the two companies intend to jointly develop a highly automated interlinked system that enables a broad spectrum of information sharing between KLA-Tencor's TeraScan(TM), TeraStar(TM) and STARlight(TM) reticle inspection systems, and Carl Zeiss SMT's AIMS(TM) fab and AIMS fab plus systems for both 248-nm and 193-nm wavelengths. Exclusive to KLA-Tencor and Carl Zeiss SMT systems, this bi-directional interlink is expected to deliver a seamless solution that allows reticle defect data and images captured by KLA-Tencor's inspection systems to be utilized by Carl Zeiss SMT review and disposition tools, with full feedback to the KLA-Tencor tools. The net effect will be higher quality reticles, as well as shorter process development cycle time, without compromising inspection sensitivity or actinic (at wavelength) review and dispositioning quality. The interlink is intended to be retrofitable, allowing customers to better leverage their existing KLA-Tencor and Carl Zeiss SMT reticle inspection and review tools, which currently populate all of the major mask production facilities worldwide.
Commenting on the strategic alliance, Dr. Hermann Gerlinger, CEO of Carl Zeiss SMT, noted that KLA-Tencor is the technology and market leader in reticle inspection and the preeminent supplier offering a single platform solution for comprehensive inspection of photomasks used in multiple lithography processes, including 248-nm and 193-nm wavelength lithography. "By combining this single platform solution with our unique AIMS capabilities, we can create a closed-loop framework that delivers unparalleled mask inspection, review and defect dispositioning capabilities. This, in turn, can enable our wafer fab and mask manufacturing customers to cost-effectively monitor and control the quality of their advanced photomasks in both development and production."
Glasser of KLA-Tencor added that this closed-loop control will be essential to meeting tomorrow's photomask production and process control requirements, as each successive device shrink further burdens mask and IC manufacturers with building and assuring the perfect mask-all while minimizing production costs and development time. "By partnering with Carl Zeiss SMT -- the industry standard for optical aerial image measurement and disposition -- we intend to leverage our complementary technologies to deliver a seamless reticle process control solution that can help our joint customers meet their roadmap objectives. Our first joint effort is expected to achieve this goal by speeding and optimizing our customers' mask inspection and review processes, while providing them with significant cost-of-ownership advantages."
Customers can view demonstrations of the new interlink solution beginning in October 2003 at KLA-Tencor's customer demo facility in San Jose, or at Carl Zeiss SMT's AIMS demo facility in Jena, Germany.
About Carl Zeiss SMT AG: Carl Zeiss SMT AG is a leading direct and indirect supplier to the semiconductor industry. As an innovation leader in the field of lithography optics and optical and electron beam-based inspection and measuring systems, Carl Zeiss SMT generates significant momentum for further development in the chip industry. In the 2001/2002 fiscal year, Carl Zeiss SMT AG achieved a sales figure of EURO 550 million and employed 1,800 people. Carl Zeiss Microelectronic Systems GmbH, a 100 percent subsidiary of Carl Zeiss SMT, is specialized in optical mask and wafer review and inspection systems. Visit zeiss.de for additional information.
About KLA-Tencor: KLA-Tencor is the world leader in yield management and process control solutions for semiconductor manufacturing and related industries. Headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with operations around the world, KLA-Tencor ranked #6 on S&P's 2002 index of the top 500 companies in the U.S. KLA-Tencor is traded on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol KLAC. Additional information about the company is available on the Internet at kla-tencor.com .
NOTE: TeraScan, TeraStar and STARlight are trademarks of KLA-Tencor. AIMS is a trademark of Carl Zeiss.
Source: KLA-Tencor |
