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To: Tsaen Wang who wrote (23179)	10/5/1999 10:46:00 PM
From: Ian@SI	Respond to of 25960

And how many F2 lasers are in production anywhere in the world? Hint 1: The answer is zero. And how many F2 lasers will be in production anywhere in the world during the next 3 years? See Hint 1. LP placing a 157nm F2 laser into an R&D consortium just doesn't get me excited. Rather, it appears that LP has given up on both the current generation (248nm), the next generation (193nm) and has a feeble 10W entry into what might be the follow on generation to that. Now if 3 or 4 years from now, Sematech were to announce that they'd looked at the available lasers and LP is the winner, that would get my attention. Now they're just doing an evaluation. And as usual, LP is likely to come up short. JMHO, Ian.

To: Tsaen Wang who wrote (23179)	10/5/1999 10:55:00 PM
From: FJB	Respond to of 25960

RE:Lambda Physik won Sematech order! They are the only people shipping F2 lasers right now, although Cymer starts shipping their design in early 2000. 157nm lithography is still a very iffy proposition. You should take a look at a Laser Focus World article titled "Lithography at 157 nm gains momentum" from August of '99. Here is an excerpt: ========================================================== Excimer defines wavelength The design wavelength of a lithographic projection lens is defined by its light source. A decade ago, this source was the mercury arc lamp, with emission lines at 365, 405, and 436 nm. As IC feature sizes pushed down below 0.5 µm and shorter wavelengths became necessary to create them, the excimer laser became the definitive source for leading-edge lithography-first the krypton fluoride laser at 248 nm and then the argon fluoride laser at 193 nm. This relationship is so strong that nonexcimer lasers intended for lithography must be designed to emit at excimer wavelengths (see Laser Focus World, Feb. 1998, p. 135). The 157-nm-emitting F2 laser is simply the latest in this series of excimers. Such a laser is commercially available from Lambda Physik Inc. (Ft. Lauderdale, FL). Heinrich Endert, international marketing manager, explains that a lithographic laser is not simply a scientific laser with another name. "It must meet a coordinated set of standards developed by Sematech," he says. The commercial laser emits 10-mJ pulses at a 600-Hz repetition rate, with a 1-kHz rate available soon. A similar 1-kHz experimental laser produces an average power of 20 W. As for difficulties related to the 157-nm wavelength, Endert says that "coming up with energy monitors is a challenge." Researchers at Cymer Inc. (San Diego, CA), a company whose sole product is lithographic excimer lasers, have developed a 20-W F2 laser that operates at a 2-kHz repetition rate, with an estimated gas lifetime of 25 million pulses using periodic F2 injections. The laser operates either in a broadband mode, emitting at two transition lines, or in a lower-power single-line mode with a full-width-half-maximum line width of 1.14 pm. Although this linewidth is narrow enough for catadioptric projection lenses, a fully refractive lens would require a laser with line narrowing to a width of 0.2 pm, due to the chromatic dispersion of 157-nm optics. "There is a lot of interest in the potential for line narrowing," says Gerry Blumenstock, 157-nm program manager at Cymer. "For the [wafer-stepper and scanner] manufacturers already using refractive optics, the infrastructure is in place to build all-refractive systems." A commercial version of the laser is in development, says Blumenstock.