Here is an estimate on Excimer consumables from AMD that appeared in an SBN article in July:
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A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc.
Story posted at 8:15 p.m. EDT/5:15 p.m. PDT, 7/14/97
AMD finds excimer laser very costly
By Jack Robertson
SAN FRANCISCO -- The transition to excimer-laser deep ultraviolet lithography comes at a price -- an order of magnitude higher costs than previous mercury arc lamp stepper systems, said Harry Levinson, Advanced Micro Devices project leader for deep UV lithography. He told a Semicon West symposium here today that the excimer laser light source and consumables cost $250,000 a year compared with $25,000 annually for the mercury lamp deep UV systems.
Levinson said AMD laboratories are testing the SVG Lithography Micrascan-II deep UV using the mercury lamp, compared with a ASM Lithography excimer laser system. The new AMD quarter-micron wafer fab being constructed in Dresden, Germany, will use ASM Lithography step-and-scan deep UV systems to make critical wafer layers, and new ALMS wide-field I-line steppers for non-critical layers.
The AMD official said at quarter-micron feature sizes, however, excimer laser deep UV lithography can pattern more precise line widths, and offers a migration path down to 0.18-micron feature size. He said an unexpected problem of excimer laser lithography systems is the need for many more pieces of support equipment in the clean room environment. "No one really thought about the problem of needing more filter modules, more coaters and more resist tracks. We need to get more density in equipment, just as we have created greater chip densities," he said.
One major problem is the throughput gap resulting from steppers processing 80 wafers an hour and resist tracks, which at 60 wafers an hour can't keep up. "If you try to put in more resist tracks and more filters and coaters to keep pace with steppers, you add more cost and reliability can go down," he said. Also floor space for all the new equipment becomes a headache, he added.
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Gary. |
