Major chip maker orders optics for EUV lithography

LONDON – Specialist optics and metrology firm Zygo Corp. (Middlefield, Conn.) has been awarded a $2 million order to produce advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) optics from "a major semiconductor company."

Completion of order will take nearly two years and is likely to be for use in the development of EUV lithographic process technologies.

The order is associated a microexposure tool research project called MET-5 being conducted by Sematech at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) at the University of Albany in New York State, Zygo said. The upgraded optics will help researchers achieve line widths of less than 16-nm in support of process development out to the year 2025, Zygo said.

The order is a follow on to a $9 million order given to Zygo by CNSE and Sematech to develop optics for MET-5 that was announced in October 2011. This is in support of EUV resist and EUV mask developments. The development and production of the EUV mirror system and for the follow on are both expected to take 22 months and both will be carried out by Zygo's extreme precision optics (EPO) operation in Richmond, California.

It is not clear why the follow-on order has come from "a major semiconductor company" rather than through CNSE or Sematech. IBM, Intel, Globalfoundries Samsung, TSMC and Toshiba, are all working at CNSE. However Intel or TSMC are the likeliest candidates to be the major semiconductor company to have ordered EUV optics from Zygo.

Intel is the world leader in terms of the miniaturization of manufacturing processes and is already down at 22-nm minimum geometries – which it makes using conventional optical lithography – while TSMC is known to have already taken delivery of a pre-production EUV lithography machine from ASML Holding NV (Veldhoven, The Netherlands) and so may be accelerating its own EUV process development. However, IBM is a leader in the Common Platform Alliance that also includes Samsung and Globlfoundries.

"To be entrusted with this follow-on order for some of the finest EUV optics ever made is testimony to 20 years of accomplishment in this field," said Marc Tricard, executive director of business development at Zygo, in a statement.

Related links and articles:

www.zygo.com

cnse.albany.edu

www.sematech.org

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