Samsung urges for more EUV support

HALF MOON BAY, Calif. -- South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has publicly jumped on the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography bandwagon.

Samsung has also joined the chorus that the industry must do more to enable EUV, which has been beset by delays.

Behind the scenes, Samsung has been working on EUV for chip production and could put the technology in R&D as early as this year. The company is also said to have ordered one of the ''pre-production'' EUV tools from ASML Holding NV of the Netherlands.

With a working, high numerical aperture system, EUV could propel Moore's Law and pave the way for 5-nm designs, said Kinam Kim, a Samsung fellow and president of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, an R&D unit of the Korean conglomerate.

''I am 100 percent confident we will make EUV available,'' he said at SEMI's Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) here.

He also acknowledged that EUV must overcome some technical hurdles, such as the power source and mask infrastructure. "We require more aggressive participation'' from the tool vendors and IC industry, he added.

Following warning shots from Intel Corp., Sematech recently sounded the alarm bells--again. The chip-making consortium recently warned that there is still a major funding shortfall and a lack of mask inspection gear to enable EUV lithography.