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Technology Stocks : General Lithography -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Demosthenes who wrote (1189)	2/28/2000 10:30:00 PM
From: Qualified Opinion	Respond to of 1305

Demosthenes, IBM doesn't have a working model They believe its possible to build. This technology is years away if it works.

To: Demosthenes who wrote (1189)	2/28/2000 11:23:00 PM
From: Andrew Vance	Respond to of 1305

This story has made the rounds today and I think it started here with a private message. Your comments are correct about e-beam and Utrabeam. The real issue is that e-beam has been the next generation of lithography after UV-DUV runs it course for more than a decade. Somehow we managed to find ways to keep e-beam in the back rooms. The new articles about PSM or OPC with 248nm systems as well as the early UT articles using CYMI Lasers for 0.08u features all lead me to believe that we cannot count out DUV yet. There is still a synchrotron ring for X-ray litho in Munich, I think, at an institute. the time will come for e-beam, make no mistake about it. I just do not see it in the very near future based on cost and throughput. Now there is the rub, cost and throughput. This is why I put a great deal of emphasis in a prior reply here relative the UTEK and the Ultrabeam. IF (and boy do I mean IF in capital letters) a cost effective, relatively high throughput, direct write system like the Ultrabeam actually come to fruition, it could displace DUV in certain niche manaufacturing sites where the manufacturing enterprise is based on high mix and low volumes. Direct write eliminates the need for reticles, which are now becoming one of the most costly parts of the process. Being able to prototype devices and make numerous design changes on a wafer prior to going into production would allow for the qualification of a device on a wafer. Think about it. You could alter the design slightly to run the full specification limits for the device all on one wafer and see how robust the design is through the rest of the process steps. I have high hopes for direct write technology but I still see a solid future for DUV over the next 3-5 years, at a minimum. This is too far out to be worried about. HOWEVER, I must admit that a limited use of e-beam for super crtical levels like gate definition could be done in a mix and match configuration for specific devices. Who knows, this might be the ticket for the advanced processors with the 1.2 GHz and above speeds and eliminate the binning of parts by speed.<GGG> AV

To: Demosthenes who wrote (1189)	2/29/2000 12:46:00 PM
From: FJB	Respond to of 1305

PREVAIL uses masks, so it's not direct write. It is also totally unrelated to Ultrabeam.

To: Demosthenes who wrote (1189)	2/29/2000 12:50:00 PM
From: Jim Oravetz	Respond to of 1305

IBM to disclose details of new photoresist for 0.10-micron processing By Jack Robertson, Semiconductor Business News Feb 25, 2000 (7:13 AM) URL: semibiznews.com EAST FISHKILL, N.Y. -- IBM Corp.'s Microelectronics Division will tell the SPIE Microlithography Conference next week in Santa Clara, Calif. that it has licensed JSR Inc. of Japan to produce a new photoresist capable of taking 248-nanometer exposure tools down to 0.10-micron processing. George Gombo, manager of lithography at East Fishkill, said the Japanese firm is expected to have the new resist on the market in the first half of this year. He said IBM is already using the material extensively in its own chip operations. The new resist uses bilayer imaging to extend the range of krypton fluoride (KrF) 248-nm tools. Gombo said it is a silicon-containing resist with high etch resistive and anti-reflective coating. He said the extreme 0.10-micron processing is for application-specific circuits, but can be used for both memory and logic chips. IBM will also provide more details at the SPIE meeting on its custom optics system that is part of the cooperative development with Nikon Inc. for a next-generation electron beam projection lithography system. Gombo said the new high-emissive optic system has a large numerical aperture (NA) up to 0.7 and supports a large area exposure for greater tool throughput. A second paper will describe the projection reduction exposure technique using variable immersive lenses. Gombo said this corrects a problem of electron-beam exposure systems in which the electron beam width passing through the mask is sometimes degraded by electron repulsion. The IBM optics minimize the electron interaction with the mask and allow undistorted exposure on the wafer. IBM will also provide the first details of e-beam mask developments coming from its joint venture with Photronics Inc. (see July 12, 1999 story). Gombo said initial research results on both membrane and stencil masks will be presented. Jim