EUV LLC Enters Development Agreement With Newly Formed U.S. Advanced Lithography
Staff -- Semiconductor International, 7/1/1998
EUV LLC Enters Development Agreement
With Newly Formed U.S. Advanced Lithography
The newly formed United States Advanced Lithography Limited Liability Company (USAL, San Jose, Calif.) entered into a non-exclusive agreement with the Extreme Ultraviolet Limited Liability Company (EUV LLC, Santa Clara, Calif.) to develop EUV lithography tools. The alliance is the second such agreement made by the EUV LLC to license the development function of the EUV lithography effort to a U.S.-based lithography company.
USAL was formed by Ultratech Stepper (San Jose, Calif.) to help U.S. equipment manufacturers strengthen and expand their competitiveness in the world economy by producing the EUV tools in America. It is the first company to focus solely on post-optical lithography, and additional participants are expected to join. Intel (Santa Clara, Calif.), Motorola (Austin, Texas) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif.) founded EUV LLC to fund continued EUV lithography research and to commercialize the technology with early access for the EUV LLC participating companies.
The EUV LLC and its member companies have been aggressively developing EUV technology in a CRADA partnership with the Virtual National Laboratory, which has been formed among representatives from Lawrence Livermore (Livermore, Calif.), Lawrence Berkeley (Berkeley, Calif.) and Sandia National Laboratories (Albuquerque, N.M.).
Commenting on the agreement with USAL, Director of EUV LLC Business Programs Sander H. Wilson noted, "USAL's participation is logical and welcomed since Ultratech has been an early participant and advocate of this technology. The program will definitely benefit from USAL's participation." According to EUV LLC officials, the proof of concept test system for EUV lithography will be built at Sandia National Laboratories over the next two years and will be used to demonstrate the lithographic potential of the technology.
