Industry forum set to decide future of lithography
By Peter Clarke
Silicon Strategies
01/26/2004, 1:06 PM ET
AUSTIN, Texas -- As New Hampshire voters prepared to go to the primary polls this week, lithographers a continent away were poised to cast ballots that could decide the litho future of the nation's semiconductor industry.
More than 330 lithographers were expected to convene in Los Angeles for an extraordinary meeting intended to determine the forms of lithography that chip makers will need during the rest of this decade.
Organized by International Sematech, the Litho Forum is planned for Wednesday (January 28, 2004) and Thursday, following a one-day update Tuesday on 193-nm immersion lithography at the same venue. The Litho Forum will culminate with a vote on Thursday evening, tallying responses to two questions: the first asks which form of lithography each company plans to have in use for volume chip manufacturing for the 45-nm node in 2007; the second vote asks the type of lithography that will be needed for manufacturing in 2009, when chips with a 32-nanometer half pitch will be in production.
Presentations are planned for Thursday by the champions of electron-beam projection lithography (EPL), charged particle maskless lithography based on multiple electron beams, optical maskless lithography based on micromirrors and nanoimprint lithography.
Betsy Weitzman, the chief operating officer at Sema-tech, said that the executive steering committee asked Sematech to organize the meeting last spring. It was becoming obvious then that immersion techniques would be applied to 193-nm scanners to narrow the wavelength to 134 nm. Also, 157-nm lithography was struggling with two challenges: the inability to find an organic material for the pellicle, which protects the mask from contamination, and questions about an adequate supply of the high-quality calcium fluoride material needed for the lenses in 157-nm scanners.
"Ultimately, the industry needs to narrow its options," Weitzman said. "It takes a lot of money to develop a new form of lithography, and the suppliers need some assurance that they can recoup those investments."
Sematech itself has invested heavily in 157-nm technology development, but after several years of investigation, she said, developing a pellicle "still will take major invention."
One subject to be discussed at the forum is whether reticle enhancement techniques can extend193-nm lithography through the 45-nm node. A second, related question hangs on the timing of extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), development of which needs to be pushed so it can be ready for the critical layers of the 32-nm node, expected by 2009.
The development of 157-nm lithography was affected last May, when Intel Corp. said that its road map called for "dry" 193-nm tools to be used for the 45-nm node, and for EUV to come in thereafter. Nikon Corp. (Tokyo) recently issued a statement saying that it is working on 193 immersion and EUV. While the company continues to develop EPL and 157-nm tools, a spokesman said that for development to continue, customers must indicate by March whether they plan to buy EPL or 157-nm tools. Otherwise, 157 and EPL development programs will be "frozen," the spokesman said.
The forum will begin on Wednesday with presentations by the technology "champions" for 193-nm immersion, 157-nm and EUV lithography. Participants will be asked to fill out surveys for each technology, resulting in a rank ordering of the technical challenges facing each form of lithography.
For the Thursday vote on manufacturing readiness in 2007 and 2009, each company represented will have one vote. Sematech staff will tally the votes and make a report later that evening.
Asked if the forum was intended to kill off the 157-nm development effort, Walt Trybula, a Sematech senior fellow and the chairman of the Litho Forum, said, "Absolutely not....but people have to vote with their dollars." |
