Your take on Cymer's KrF laser jells with my notes from Akins' briefing and subsequent conversations. He said KrF is here and now and is producing 0.25um and in some cases 0.2um line widths. He expects 0.18um by 1999, 0.15um by 2001, (Motorola thinks they can squeeze 0.13um) and the ultimate achievable by DUV is 0.1um, probably achievable around 2006. ArF (Argon Fluoride) and F2 (Fluorine) lasers may be capable to 0.07um by year2009. Excimer laser is and will remaim the litho illuminator of choice for critical dimmensions fab through the year 2009.
BTW, Akins said of AMLF's $170M order, 1/3 is DUV and 2/3 is i-line tools as stated at yesterday's Montgomery conference.
Much of the Montgomery conference centered on the implications fallout from IBM's Copper process breakthrough. The analysts pretty much accepted the fact that Cymer's thin-line DUV lithography and IBM's Copper process are complementary, and not competing, technologies.
The Montgomery analyst, Brad Hardus (sp?) who downgraded Cymer last Monday speculated that some manufacturing problem, other than Cymer's laser, may be holding up deliveries of DUV tools to the chip makers. The latter folks are desperate for more DUV tools and are not getting them fast enough. Akins disavows knowledge (moreover Cymer is not privy to such data as it is highly proprietary to each Cymer customer) of any such problem, and said [as Bill Angus earlier said] that there has been no dimishing of orders/backlog. But, the analyst's conjectured scenario could materialize, if not now, at some future time, and it could have material impact on Cymer's business. Cymer is required to disclose such information if and when it happens, according to Akins. To sum up, Akins said the chip-makers can't get enough DUV tools, and Cymer's business is at the cusp of upturn.
I'll report more tomorrow. Got to go.
Regards to all,
Tulvio |
