The upcoming Spring Materials Research Society (MRS) Meeting in San Francisco will feature a separate “Nanocontact and Nanointerconnects Workshop” to explore the biggest secret about the smallest devices: for the near-term there’s nothing better than standard metal. The workshop will address both theoretical and experimental approaches to formation, carrier transport, and reliability, and so will […]
Another back-to-the-future possibility for next-generation lithography (NGL) is direct write e-beam (DWEB), revitalized with multibeam clusters, curvilinear mask writing, and character projection (CP). The E-beam Initiative used the recent SPIE gathering to announce that it had added six new member companies, including GlobalFoundries and Samsung. Aki Fujimura, CEO of D2S and Managing Director of the […]
This year’s plenary sessions of the SPIE Advanced Lithography Symposium exposed the complexities of patterning ICs in high-volume manufacturing (HVM) at the 22nm node and beyond. Steppers using 193nm ArF immersion (193i) will be extended using double-patterning (DP) schemes, since the extreme-ultra-violet litho (EUVL) infrastructure is again delayed. R&D to support DP integration has led […]
Molecular Imprints, Inc, announced their first nanopatterning tool designed for pilot and volume production of patterned hard disc drive (HDD) substrates at the SPIE Advanced Lithography Symposium in San Jose, CA February 22. The NuTera HD7000 uses Jet and Flash Imprint Lithography (J-FIL) technology to print over 300 double sided disks per hour up to […]
The SPIE’s 7th Frits Zernike Award for Advances in Optical Microlithography goes to M. David Levenson, BetaSights Litho & DFM Editor, in recognition of one of the most important developments in lithography resolution enhancement of the last twenty years, the phase shifting mask (PSM). About 30 years ago at the IBM San Jose Lab, Levenson […]
Based on proven hardware sub-systems from previous models, Applied Materials has released a new chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP) tool that processes two 300mm diameter wafers simultaneously on each of two plattens. Initially targeting copper interconnect formation for memory ICs, the Reflexion GT tool has passed betasite tests at multiple customers, and reportedly provides 60% higher throughput […]
Intermolecular, the company that brought combinatorial chemistry to semiconductor manufacturing R&D, has expanded its focus to look at ways to improve basic manufacturing processes for photovoltaic (PV) fabs. “I think that the PV devices of 10 years from now will look significantly different from those of today,” said Intermolecular vice president and general manager of […]
If EUV lithography is to succeed, infrastructure gaps will need to be addressed forthwith. The lack of inspection tools for EUV masks and substrates constitutes one such gap, now recognized as a priority by SEMATECH. At the OSA/APS Frontiers in Optics (FiO) meeting held in San Jose, October 11-15, Carmen Menoni of Colorado State University […]
Founded in 1984 with Flemish government support, IMEC has reached 25 years. To celebrate the organization’s accomplishments, BetaSights joined other industry media outlets attending a research review event in beautiful Leuven, Belgium. From 1999 to 2009 has been the “phase of international breakthrough” as described by current president Luc Van den hove. Working with OEMs […]
KLA-Tencor recently announced its long awaited 193nm reticle defect inspection tool, the Teron 600. Wafer scanners adopted 193nm exposure wavelength years ago in order to shrink circuit features below the resolution limit set by the previous (248nm) wavelength, roughly 130nm. The photomasks used in those tools, however, continued to be inspected at 257nm, in spite […]