IMEC claims it received first EUV tool
EE Times Europe
08/29/2006
LONDON — The Interuniversities Microelectronics Center (IMEC), an independent research facility, has claimed that it, not the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) of the University at Albany, New York, received the world's first extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography tool.
It was reported Monday (Aug. 28) that ASML Holding NV (Veldhoven, The Netherlands) had shipped a (EUV) Alpha Demo Tool (ADT) to CNSE and that IMEC (Leuven, Belgium) would also be be receiving a similar machine (see Aug. 28 story)
On Tuesday (aug. 29) IMEC announced that it received its EUV machine nearly two weeks before at 7:00am on Aug. 16 and that since then has operated the machine in full speed wafer runs in collaboration with ASML researchers.
ASML issued a statement Tuesday (Aug. 29) but this did not shed light on which institute received the first machine.
"Both the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany, N.Y., and the nanoelectronics research institute IMEC in Leuven, Belgium, have received these industry first, full field EUV systems," the company said in a statement.
The EUV machine has been described as a $65 million tool and a critical step in the development and commercialization of lithography. It is also described as a cornerstone of IMEC's advanced lithography program which runs research on hyper-numerical aperture immersion lithography on ASML's XT 1700i machine, double-patterning immersion and EUV in parallel.
IMEC's research partners include nine leading IC makers; Infineon, Intel, Matsushita, Micron, Philips Semiconductor, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. EUV is the most likely candidate technology for the 32-nm half-pitch node.
"We are excited that we've started the installation of the world's first full field EUV system mid-August," said Luc Van den hove, Vice President Silicon Process and Device Technology at IMEC, in a statement. "Thanks to this long-term strategic partnership and IMEC's worldwide network with industry, universities and research centers, we are convinced that we will be able to bring EUV available for production at the 32-nm half pitch node," he added. |
