Feb 26 2010

Imprint, eBeam and Self Assembly all delay EUV Litho

Published by at 11:35 am under Uncategorized

At the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference, updates on NanoImprint technology, eBeam and Self Assembly techniques were presented that were all confident that EUV would be pushed out until the 16nm process node at the earliest.  In addition to new equipment (such as the Nikon NSR-S620D) and techniques for double & quad patterning, it was clear that optical and existing technologies for lithography through the 22nm node were the solution of choice.  While EUV has made progress in the recent past, the cost and throughput were still sited as major issues.
Several universities and Molecular Imprints presented papers on the recent advances in NanoImprint Lithography (NIL).  Molecular discussed their NuTera HD7000 system which is tarted to the disk drive and patterned media market.  The tool is a very high throughput (>300 double sided dph at field size up to 95mm [3.5inch]) while maintaining a sub 25nm resolution.  The new machine is about half the footprint of its previous 150dph machine and is shipping in 2010.  Molecular has sold 13 of these systems to five drive customers including Hitachi.   The new technology is currently in the 800+Gb//in sq density range and they have a roadmap to address the over 4Tb/in sq range in the future.
To accompany the new printer, they announced installation of thier Perfecta TR1100 template printer.  One of the previous limitations on imprint technology was the long creation time of the templates and their associated wear cycle.  The new template printer can create 10 templates/hr (equiv of a “soft tool” for the prototype world) for production use vs the greater than 1 week turnaround for a traditional Gaussian e-beam created master (equiv of a “hard tool” for the prototype world).  These template printers have also been installed at traditional masking companies such as Hoya.
On the semiconductor side, their Imprio 300 printer is now providing 4 wph throughput while allowing for mix and match overlay accuracy to a 193i layer of better than 20nm for applicability to current CMOS memory use.  DNP has purchased thier mask replication tool for use in 24nm half-pitch applications.
D2S and the eBeam Initiative announced application of their direct write on wafer technology using character shaped beams (DFEB) to mask making.  As their technology advances for wafer throughput, they applied the technology to mask mastering and achieved a combination of higher design accuracy on via and cell printing, while maintaining the current wafer throughput.  The new application is being investigated and tested by current members DNP and Toppan.  As a result, they announced that several customers and inspection profivers have now joined the initiative including Global Foundries, Samsung, KLA and Jeol.
One of the most crowded sessions was on Self-Assembly (SA) techniques and materials.  This session was dominated by papers from IBM. The results indicated that “bounding” and “guide” techniques for the SA materials in the 5-6nm feature size, could be used to create usable lines and hole patterns (devices/interconnect and vias) for 22nm node half pitch applications.  They presented preliminary results that indicated these techniques were extensable to use at 16nm nodes and further delay the need for EUV.  The major advancement was the rapid formation of the structures moving from close to 1 hour assembly times to the 1-5minute time frame.
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At the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference, updates on NanoImprint technology, eBeam and Self Assembly techniques were presented that were all confident that EUV would be pushed out until the 16nm process node at the earliest.  In addition to new equipment (such as the Nikon NSR-S620D) and techniques for double & quad patterning, it was clear that optical and existing technologies for lithography through the 22nm node were the solution of choice.  While EUV has made progress in the recent past, the cost and throughput were still sited as major issues.

Several universities and Molecular Imprints presented papers on the recent advances in NanoImprint Lithography (NIL).  Molecular discussed their NuTera HD7000 system which is tarted to the disk drive and patterned media market.  The tool is a very high throughput (>300 double sided dph at field size up to 95mm [3.5inch]) while maintaining a sub 25nm resolution.  The new machine is about half the footprint of its previous 150dph machine and is shipping in 2010.  Molecular has sold 13 of these systems to five drive customers including Hitachi.   The new technology is currently in the 800+Gb//in sq density range and they have a roadmap to address the over 4Tb/in sq range in the future.

To accompany the new printer, they announced installation of thier Perfecta TR1100 template printer.  One of the previous limitations on imprint technology was the long creation time of the templates and their associated wear cycle.  The new template printer can create 10 templates/hr (equiv of a “soft tool” for the prototype world) for production use vs the greater than 1 week turnaround for a traditional Gaussian e-beam created master (equiv of a “hard tool” for the prototype world).  These template printers have also been installed at traditional masking companies such as Hoya.

On the semiconductor side, their Imprio 300 printer is now providing 4 wph throughput while allowing for mix and match overlay accuracy to a 193i layer of better than 20nm for applicability to current CMOS memory use.  DNP has purchased thier mask replication tool for use in 24nm half-pitch applications.

D2S and the eBeam Initiative announced application of their direct write on wafer technology using character shaped beams (DFEB) to mask making.  As their technology advances for wafer throughput, they applied the technology to mask mastering and achieved a combination of higher design accuracy on via and cell printing, while maintaining the current wafer throughput.  The new application is being investigated and tested by current members DNP and Toppan.  As a result, they announced that several customers and inspection profivers have now joined the initiative including Global Foundries, Samsung, KLA and Jeol.

One of the most crowded sessions was on Self-Assembly (SA) techniques and materials.  This session was dominated by papers from IBM. The results indicated that “bounding” and “guide” techniques for the SA materials in the 5-6nm feature size, could be used to create usable lines and hole patterns (devices/interconnect and vias) for 22nm node half pitch applications.  They presented preliminary results that indicated these techniques were extensable to use at 16nm nodes and further delay the need for EUV.  The major advancement was the rapid formation of the structures moving from close to 1 hour assembly times to the 1-5minute time frame.

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