Betty,
Sorry for going off the deep end. I have been around for quite some time, in fact I had a very active part in the first pass XRAY generation 10+ years ago. I have watched XRAY be the end all since that time and have watched it drain critical research dollars away from other potential programs (no government representative wants to kill a program that would lay off people in their territory and xray has covered a lot of territory), but some very fundamental issues still plague it.
1) It requires the installations of at least two synchotron rings. These are not items that can be added to existing fabs of semiconductor manufacturers. They require a new fab to be built around them (a multi-billion $ investment)..
2) The masks that are used to generate the images are 1X magnification. The masks suppliers today {PLAB, DPMI, etc} have extreme difficulty making 4X masks for the 0.25um generation. In fact they significantly lag their customers demands. Internal mask shops like those at IBM, Intel, and others can push harder, but they still have extreme difficulty in making the masks. In fact it has been reported that each xray mask costs on the order of $100K (compared to ~$5K for a 4X mask) and they have lifetime issues.
To put IBM's commitment in perspective. They have a synchotron ring and steppers, that they, the government, and others paid for. They make their masks internally. In summary, they have all the necessary items and they are pushing xray very hard to establish whether or not the technology can be inserted. However, they have not bet the farm on it. They are strongly invested in 248nm and 193nm. In fact their 193nm resist program was the first in the world and appears to be the best. In addition, like all other semiconductor manufacturers, they are watching closely the development of the alternative technologies in case one has a breakthrough.
I guess you are right, we will have to sit and wait it out, but my money is not on xray.
TS |
