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To: Dwight Griffin who wrote (15188)	2/27/1998 4:28:00 PM
From: BillyG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25960

.08 micron breakthrough could be in pilot lines next year!!!!!! The process might be scalable up to 248nm!!!!! (click on link to see a photo of the stars) techweb.cmp.com Posted: 3:00 p.m. EST, 2/27/98 Litho breakthrough could be in fabs by next year, researcher says By Brian Fuller SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The head of a research team that etched 0.08-micron lines for the first time using conventional lithography said the technology could be in pilot lines as early as next year, although a host of issues remain to be ironed out. "There's still an awful lot of work to be done to see what the process limitations are, issues regarding process latitude," said Grant Willson of the University of Texas at Austin, who oversaw the work of graduate student Kyle Patterson. Patterson and Willson this week announced they had fabricated a 0.08-micron device using a deep-ultraviolet (DUV) stepper and special resists. Such an achievement, if it can hold up in a production environment, could spare the industry from spending millions on, for instance, X-ray lithography. IBM has said it can use X-ray lithography to draw 0.07-micron lines, but the X-ray tools require an expensive synchrotron orbital radiation ring. Patterson presented a paper on the University of Texas breakthrough at the annual Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) lithography show. Researchers Kyle Patterson (left), Dr. Grant Willson and Jeffrey Byers of Sematech, working at the University of Texas, Austin, made 0.08-micron circuits using convention lithography. Source: University of Texas Intellectual property (IP) rights are another thorny issue that must be resolved in negotiations with more than a half-dozen companies and groups that have participated in the research, Willson said. "The IP issue is really a mess, as you can well imagine," Willson said in an interview with EE Times. "I have tried to avoid the issue, frankly, and let the business people take care of it. It's probably going to be messy getting sorted out, but there are some good people working on it." Research into a special resist that could extend the life of DUV lithography has been going on nearly five years, Willson said. Avoiding the simple trial-and-error approach, researchers took existing findings and tried various polymers to see what resists would be both transparent to the DUV wavelength but resistive to the etch process--not an easy trick. Some earlier research into resists by scientists at Fujitsu Ltd. led them to use amorphous polyolefin for this process. A common polymer, amorphous polyolefin is used on a wide scale by Japan Synthetic Rubber Co., a partner in the research, on applications such as CD-ROMs. It is also used in clothing and other applications. "It's not terribly exotic," Willson said. So why wasn't its utility discovered sooner? "On my part there was some misinterpretation about what was required to make the resist work," he said. "Fujitsu and some others did experiments that made us realize polyolefins could work." Once they hit on what they thought would be the proper resists, they persuaded DuPont Photomask Inc. (Round Rock, Texas) to donate a special mask for the procedure. Using an Integrated Solutions Inc. (Austin, Texas) 10X stepper with a 193-nm wavelength DUV source, the team etched isolated lines, nested and periodic structures and resolution test patterns. Willson said there is some wiggle room yet to be determined that could push the resolution below 0.08 micron. In addition, the technology could also scale up from 193-nm wavelengths to mainstream 248-nm, where some efficiencies might be achieved, he added. Willson said the semiconductor industry could conceivably have pilot lines using the new technique next year as companies such as ASML (Veldhoven, Netherlands), Nikon Precision Inc. (Belmont, Calif.) and SVGL (San Jose, Calif.) roll out DUV steppers with 193-nm capability. Willson said what surprised him about the work was that after some initial funding from Semiconductor Research Corp. and then Sematech, several companies became involved, lending scientists to the effort. "They had employees working full time on the project, side by side, with the student and competitors working across the bench from one another," Willson said. "People recognized that it had to be done very rapidly to have an impact" on the industry's lithographic road map. Willson gave considerable credit to Patterson, the graduate student in organic chemistry who was recruited out of Texas Christian University in Dallas. "If you ever met him you'd feel the same as I do, that you want to adopt him."