Advanced Imaging Solutions for Shrinking the k1 Gap
There's still room for improvement in optical lithography. At SEMICON West, Stephen Renwick of Nikon Precision Inc. will share his perspective on how much more the industry can get out of 193 nm optical litho, and — perhaps more important — what it will take to get there.
SEMI, San Jose -- Semiconductor International, 6/25/2009
Anyone familiar with the advances in lithography over the past few years would be struck by the comments that were often made while the technology was being developed. Experts and pundits alike have been proven wrong many times, because the industry has wrung amazing technology capabilities out of optical lithography at 193 nm.
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Stephen Renwick, Nikon |
With each of these advances, the industry has stepped beyond what were then-current "limits" on k1. But there's still room for improvement in optical lithography, and Stephen Renwick of Nikon Precision Inc. will share his perspective on how much more the industry can get out of 193 nm optical lithography, and — perhaps more important — what it will take to get there.
There is an easy parallel to draw with chip designers and process engineers of 5-10 years ago. Then, designers realized they had to work "closer to the silicon" to understand the ramifications of design attributes, and it all came down to manufacturability based on understanding how a design would be built.
In the same manner, scanner makers are now working more closely with optical proximity correction (OPC) vendors to fully understand how a particular scanner and OPC software can better work together by taking into account the characteristics of the tool in the modeling. While not going as far as "inverse lithography" — starting with the final design and working backwards — there are several steps that can be taken to reduce the number of OPC cycles and improve source mask optimization.
After those approaches have been implemented, there are still more approaches to consider. Scanners can still be optimized to improve overlay and CD uniformity. This will not be easy, but it is a reasonable approach while the industry waits for EUV lithography — which completely resets k1, but which still will need advanced overlay and CD uniformity solutions.
The experts are still saying that optical lithography is nearing the end of its improvable performance, but there's still plenty to do — and plenty of performance to be gained — before moving on. That will be the topic of a SEMICON West presentation given by Renwick during the Lithography Challenges and Solutions session of the Device Scaling TechXPOT on Wednesday, July 15, 2-4:30 p.m.
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