Aaron Hand

It’s All About T…timing
November 13, 2007

I remember a comedic sketch (although not the comedian) years ago in which the comedian said that good comic delivery was all about t…timing (insert chuckle here). Timing has become such a huge issue in lithography, but it’s not exactly a laughing matter. So many resources have been poured into the development of candidate lithography technologies, but an increasing number of them are facing time pressures that could make them obsolete before they ever hit the shelves.

Of course, we all know the technology that has received by far the most time and money is extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. Although some people in the semiconductor industry might prefer for EUV lithography to go away so that some of that money could come their way instead, it seems to me an awful prospect to have a technology fail after so much time, money and effort has been put into it.

Not that it’s unprecedented. But actually, I think that’s what makes the whole thing scarier. People remember all too well all the resources wasted on the development of 157 nm lithography — only to have Intel announce that it would not use 157, and then the whole industry followed suit and development virtually ceased. I remember talking to suppliers at the time who had been badly hurt — optics makers, for example, who had spent their savings on developing top-grade calcium fluoride (CaF₂) lens materials.

Intel certainly understood how gun-shy the whole supply chain’s players were after 157, so got the help they needed in developing the EUV infrastructure by backing those suppliers with needed funds. One of the same optics suppliers who had mentioned to me the hurt that pulling the plug on 157 had caused also said that Intel’s tactic on EUV made entering that market relatively pain-free.

Meanwhile…

EUV lithography has been making significant progress, with several encouraging announcements in the past year. I spoke recently with Mike Lercel, Sematech’s lithography director, about the atmosphere at last month’s EUVL Symposium in Sapporo, Japan, and about what advances have been made lately in EUV. Although he was generally upbeat, and listed out a few key developments that make him optimistic about EUV, most of his points were followed by the fact that there is still work to be done in all of those areas. Despite EUV’s recent progress, it is still not happening as quickly as the industry would like.

So the question then goes back to timing — will EUV lithography progress quickly enough to survive in the long run? In my last blog posting, in which I talked about IMEC’s plans to install a pre-production EUV lithography tool from ASML sometime in 2010, I mentioned that it was a confidence vote for EUV. As one reader responded, however, that doesn’t necessarily mean a lot: “2010 is still a while away, enough time for the order to be cancelled. Still remember the 157 nm orders being cancelled all over the place.”

Yes, lots of readers remember the 157 nm orders being cancelled. And the X-ray and SCALPEL orders too, I would imagine, just to throw out a couple more. Some people think that it’s inevitable that the plug will eventually be pulled on EUV as well. If it ever is, there is no question that the pieces will land with nothing resembling a gentle thud.

Posted by Aaron Hand on November 13, 2007 | Comments (0)