Immersion Lithography...

Figure 1. (a) A sketched diagram of 193i exposure head. Water fills the gap between the final lens and the wafer. The water injection and confinement system is not included in the diagram. (b) Optical paths of two-beam interference for both "dry" and 193i exposures.

Topics: Economy, Education, Photolithography, Nanotechnology, Semiconductor Technology, STEM

This is a good article in Solid State Technology and I leave a follow-on link to SPIE (the International Society for Optics and Photonics). Regular photolithography is focusing ultraviolet light through a chrome mask (through a medium of air), which contains the pattern for the integrated circuits that make up a lot of our electronics, the Internet and in the case of our economy and travel yesterday: Wall Street and United Airlines. Immersion Lithography usually involves water as the illustration from the SPIE figure above shows.

I believe a great deal in the educational infrastructure that must exist for not just (as I've often referred to) future replacement workers, but from the perspective of viable jobs for young people to matriculate into, the "mystery" of high tech needs to be removed. It's more like hard work, the same effort in say, mastering a sports skill, a similar discipline can be mustered for STEM fields. It keeps crime down and hopes up. As a nation, we need to stop obfuscating about contrived controversies in science; fighting the Civil War (what about war is "civil" anyway?); the racism, sexism, homophobia and get everyone in the boat to ROW - hard. Patching ignored holes only delays our sinking... or salvation.

While the lithography equipment market sometimes seems like A Tale of Two Cities, it’s more complicated than that. The basic fact is that the semiconductor industry is soldiering on with 193-nanometer immersion lithography technology and multiple-patterning exposures while extreme-ultraviolet lithography continues its long-aborning development.

ASML Holding is the leading vendor in the EUV lithography field, and it’s also a big supplier of 193nm immersion lithography systems. The industry consensus now seems to be that the near future will see the combined use of EUV and immersion, possibly at the 10-nanometer process node and definitely at the 7nm node. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess.

ASML had big news to reveal at the SPIE Advanced Lithography Symposium in February. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing had successfully exposed 1,022 wafers within 24 hours on ASML’s NXE:3300B EUV system, with sustained power of more than 90 watts from the scanner’s power source.

In April, ASML reported that “one of its major U.S. customers” had agreed to order at least 15 EUV systems. Industry speculation on the unidentified customer quickly centered on Intel. The Dutch company has been relatively quiet since then.

Solid State Electronics:
Immersion lithography remains the industry’s workhorse technology, Jeff Dorsch
SPIE: 193nm immersion lithography: Status and challenges, Yayi Wei and David Back