After a 33-year incubation, EUV lithography is finally ready for volume production: Samsung and TSMC will start using this technology to process more than 1,000 wafers per day – at 7 nanometers – during 2019. The announcement came from ASML – the Dutch company that developed the EUV lithography equipment – on occasion of the European “Industry Strategy Symposium” organized by SEMI, the global industry association representing the electronics manufacturing supply chain. This year the event took place in Milan, Italy, March 31st to April 2nd, and offered a picture of the challenges and opportunities facing the semiconductor industry in Europe.
Back to single patterning
Peter Jenkins from ASML summarized the long run that lead to EUV lithography, starting from the early researches in 1986 when this wavelength band was called “soft X-rays” – it was then re-branded “extreme ultraviolet” in 1993. A major boost came from the co-development agreement signed in 2012, when Intel, Samsung and TSMC joined ASML to provide additional resources. But a key piece of the puzzle was still missing to reach full scale productivity: a powerful EUV source. This roadblock was removed in 2013, when ASML acquired its EUV source supplier – Cymer – to help R&D on this front. Now, with 250-watt sources available, everything is in place. Jenkins stressed that EUV lithography allows to use single patterning even for the most advanced process nodes, thus reducing the manufacturing cost that has soared over the past few years due to double- and quadruple-patterning.
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