TSMC set to receive Matrix 13,000 e-beam litho machine

2/17/2012 7:40 PM EST

Why aren't 22 nm line space pictures available? How is stitching accuracy?

2/18/2012 12:47 PM EST

the key factor would still be the cost per die ,when the flow is ramped to sub-20 nm .. have to see which of the two ( EUV or Matrix ) will win ..

2/20/2012 9:44 AM EST

I believe that the potential benefits of direct write ebeam are manifold. It could lower the initial cost barrier of fabricating a close to leading edge design. If the NRE costs are lower (no two million dollar mask set), perhaps it will encourage companies to take more chances on new designs. That might enable a business model with lower manufacturing volumes than would be possible using EUV lithography in the fabrication process. Direct write lithography allows multiple designs on the same wafer to help more quickly debug both the design and the fabrication process. TSMC knows that direct write lithography tools could occupy a valuable niche for them. So maybe it doesn't replace EUV for high volume manufacturing in the future but augments it instead.

2/20/2012 10:25 AM EST

With the ability to 'write' an atom at a time, STM direct write would be the ultimate solution. Put efforts into accelerating throughput there.

2/21/2012 9:46 PM EST

The NXE:3300 EUV 'HVM' tool from ASML cannot deliver 10-11 nm hp. The NXE:3100 pre-prod tool cannot deliver 14 nm hp. In fact, even 20 nm hp is not guaranteed at this point due to LER and the throughput is still lousy and cannot improve due to RLS tradeoff. The onus is on e-beam to deliver the same resolution or better at comparable throughput (10-100 wph), without any damaging effects.

9/3/2012 12:09 PM EDT

Hello, everybody,
We are running a long lasting discussion "Direct Write E-Beam Liitho- is it a Reality or a Wishful Dream? Well,maybe a greatly expensive dream..." on so-called Pseudo-Multi-Beam direct write electorn beam litho (http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=97351367&gid=1874399&commentID=93188640&trk=view_disc&ut=0IAiB-zCnAuBo1.
There is a whole bunch of critical unknowns in this approach, the main of them being the element (DPG in REBL, set of apertures in MAPPER etc.), which splits the initially large single electron beam into multiplicity (millions to get the throuput)of so-called beamlets, in a hope each of the beamlets could be independently manipulated. What is not yet realized by the Litho community (and what is kept secretn by the companies, developing the EB DW approaches, is the enormous load on these units, associated with their major functionality, which will result in their lifetime to be very short to do litho in any reasonable processing time even for a single wafer.
Same problem is associated with the exposure- the amount of energy transferred to the exposed spot is so high that the reist and probably even the substrate will be hardly withstanding it.
And final big question is associated with the devices, namely, will their elements, i.e. gates, gate dielectric, interfaces,be affected by the dense high energy (100 KeV for REBL, for example) electron bombardment.
In general, there are much more question than answers around the DW EBL. My most pessimistic comment is about the REBL at KLA: in more than 5 years of R&D and $200M ($100M from DARPA + $100M from KLA) not something even close to a litho prototype was created. Except a a thick marketing haze and PPT fanfaronade.

9/3/2012 12:31 PM EDT

Forgot to mention about one point. You, guys, are attempting to discuss the expected performance parameters, but, at this point, the main question is if a production worthy PMB DW EBL tool could be created in principle.
As per my experience (and I was heavly involved in one of the biggest DW EBL programs) there is a very little chance, if any, that it may occur any time. The problems associated just with functioning of the pattern generating unit (heating, charging, contamination-induced insability,e-beam induced material transformations etc.) are so fundamentally enormous and the feathibility of finding solutions is so slim thaI do not believe it is doable, no matter how much resources will be pumped into.

9/3/2012 11:16 PM EDT

@Yehiel, is it more suitable as a maskwriter?