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To: Rustam Tahir who wrote (24348)	2/28/2000 7:28:00 AM
From: Rustam Tahir	Respond to of 25960

E-Beam Technology From IBM I.B.M. to Introduce Advance in Chip Manufacturing By JOHN MARKOFF echnologists for International Business Machines Corp. will describe new details this week of a next-generation chip-making system that uses beams of electrons, rather than lightwaves, to etch circuits onto chips. The company believes the technology will make it possible in the future to shrink individual circuits to a size nearly as small as atoms. The new system, which IBM is developing in cooperation with Nikon Corp., has created excitement in the semiconductor industry as word of it has spread in recent months. There have been growing concerns that current lithographic systems -- which project lightwaves to etch circuit patterns on silicon wafers -- may be reaching fundamental physical limits. The new details will be presented by Hans C. Pfeiffer, who is an IBM researcher at the company's semiconductor research center in East Fishkill, N.Y. He will make his report at an industry conference sponsored by SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering, this week in Santa Clara, Calif. Although the semiconductor industry has already developed techniques for using ever-shortening wavelengths of light to reduce circuit size in the chip-making process, each new generation has required tremendous engineering feats. The cost of lightwave etching is rising to levels that may soon be prohibitive. Electron beam systems have been explored in chip-making research efforts for decades. But the new IBM system, which is known as Prevail, for Projection Reduction Exposure With Variable Axis Immersion Lenses, could represent a significant advance in throughput -- the speed at which silicon wafers can be processed. In the past, IBM has used so-called e-beam manufacturing systems in making specialized semiconductor chips used in its mainframe computers. But the company has acknowledged that those systems could not process wafers quickly enough to be economically viable in mainstream chip applications. With lightwave etching, the circuitry can be projected at once onto the surface of the chip. With electron-beam etching, past systems have required millions of circuits to be etched, in effect, a line at a time. But IBM's new system can project a pattern of electrons to etch many lines of circuits simultaneously. "We have been thinking very hard about the next big step forward in throughput," Pfeiffer said in a telephone interview on Friday. The alliance with Nikon was announced last year after Nikon executives expressed confidence the technology could be successfully commercialized. "When we started working with Nikon they were very concerned that this would ultimately not work out and they would be embarrassed," Pfeiffer said. "Only when we reached certain levels of performance were they ready to announce this to the world." He acknowledged the two companies had not yet completed a working model based on their technical advances, but said he believed such a step was now possible. IBM and Nikon are in a race in this field with Lucent Technologies. Lucent is partnering with the semiconductor equipment makers Applied Materials and ASM Lithography NV to build a similar electron beam system, which is named Scalpel. The systems function in a manner similar to -- but much more sophisticated than -- the electron beam technology that is used to rapidly scan the images appearing on television screens and desktop computer monitors. The systems could advance quickly enough to begin to play a role within the next two generations of chip-making gear, according to IBM officials. That would be a faster transition than has been assumed until now by the semiconductor industry, which has planned for lightwave etching to be the principal technology through the next two and possibly three generations of semiconductor manufacturing, beginning in 2007. "Optical is hitting real-world limits," said Richard Doherty, the president of Envisioneering, a Seaford, N.Y., computer industry consulting firm. "Ultimately, electron beam systems will be a replacement technology." The IBM-Nikon Prevail system is based on the ability to steer a small electron beam through a series of magnetic lenses that can achieve the same ultrasharp resolution on the edges of the projection field as in the center of the field. Making a working system requires the ability to control a remarkable dance in which the wafer and the mask containing the circuit pattern are continuously moved while the electron beam is switched on and off as it shifts from circuit to circuit.