Canon Goes Wet with Ichikawa at the Helm

Canon Inc., according to a reliable source, has shipped its
initial AS7 ArF immersion scanners to customers in Japan, a
twin-stage system that the source said differs from what
Canon’s competitors are offering in terms of the stage
design, meniscus control, and optics.

In 2004, Canon intended to offer a new single-stage platform,
first with a KrF source, with a plan to adapt it to the shorter ArF
wavelength.

Then, Canon’s CEO Fujio Mitarai put senior managing
director Junji Ichikawa — a board member since 1997 and chief
director of the optical business — in charge of the scanner
platform project. Ichikawa is the company’s chief hardware
platform architect, who worked first on laser beam printers,
then digital cameras, creating world-class products in both of
those highly competitive segments.

Ichikawa immediately scrapped the single-stage design, demanding
that Canon’s scanner designers create a two-stage platform
that would support both wet and dry tools capable of both 45 nm and
32 nm exposures. The dry version, called the AS5, went on the
market in the second quarter.

With 1.35 NA optics for the wet system, the AS7 is Canon’s
first twin-stage immersion ArF scanner. The liquid handling is said
to be sharply different from Nikon’s approach. Canon’s
“Liquid Film Flow” transfers the wafer between the two
stages without turning off the flow of water.

According to a source at Canon, many customers are looking for a
better immersion system that will reduce defects caused by water
droplets drying at the meniscus.

“People have turned to ASML, but that doesn’t mean
they are happy with the level of defects. We can win customers back
with a newer product,” the source said.

Also, customers such as Samsung Electronics naturally seek to
play one litho supplier off against another, maintaining price
leverage in the increasingly expensive lithography sector.

“We have a director with a vision, a product that works,
and the funding and staffing to pull it off. For Canon, it’s
the same kind of comeback story that happened in digital cameras,
which now account for a big share of the company’s
revenues,” the source said.

Can it happen? Will Ichikawa turn around Canon’s fortunes
in the ArF market, which is where nearly all of the profits
are?

Canon has a history of hanging in there in tough markets,
competing against H-P in printers, against Nikon in cameras, and
against Xerox and Ricoh in office copiers. Starting now, Canon will
have to show its hand and convince customers and analysts that it
has a superior leading-edge lithography product, something that the
chip industry hasn’t seen from Canon for too many years.