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

To: Pink Minion who wrote (754)	2/5/1998 1:57:00 AM
From: Andrew Vance	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1305

Not too long. There are supposedly some tricks for i-line within 0.25u design rules but i-line is dead below 0.25u (kiss of death by saying that since i-line was not supposed to extend beyond 1.0u originally). The claim is that the SVGL Micrascan is capable of doing 0.25u in limited production. The extension of i-line being spoken about is really a mix-and-match strategy where i-line can be used for 50% or more of the 0.25u device technology (non critical levels) while the DUV systems would be used for only those levels that would absolutely need them. The problems with DUV are no different than the problems seen in earlier generations of lithography. The price of the materials (resist and developer) has come down to just barely obnoxious levels. The environmental control issues are being addressed with improved minienvironments and materials of construction in the filtration media for the ULPA systems within the fabs. DUV is affected by some molecular and elemental contaminants associated with the standard fab air filtration media. Bottom line, these are all growing pains that will be overcome just like it has before, with different issues, in the prior lithographic technological implementations. Andrew