SAN JOSE, Calif. — What's hot at next week's Semicon West trade show in San Francisco? Alcatel, Cymer, DuPont, InterCrossIP, KLA-Tencor, New Wave, Xitronix and others have made major announcements leading up to the show.
Cymer Inc. (San Diego) rolled out its latest 193-nm lithography light source. The XLR 600i is the first 90W argon fluoride (ArF) laser light source designed to enable volume immersion and double patterning lithography at the 32-nm node and beyond, according to Cymer.
The XLR 600i is based on a Recirculating Ring architecture, which replaces the conventional power amplifier stage. The 6-KHz XLR600i produces improved pulse energy stability, resulting in improved critical dimension (CD) control.
The XLR 600i also exhibits a 10X reduction in gas refill frequency through Gas Lifetime Extension (GLX) technology, thereby increasing the net laser availability for increased wafer production output.
On the metrology front, KLA-Tencor Corp. (San Jose, Calif.) introduced the SURFmonitor, a module that extends the Surfscan SP2 unpatterned surface inspection system beyond traditional defect inspection to also monitor process variation and drift.
The SURFmonitor system is designed to measure variations in surface morphology of bare wafers or blanket films. This correlates to a broad array of process parameters such as surface roughness, grain size, and temperature.
SURFmonitor creates detailed, full-wafer parametric maps with sub-Angstrom repeatability in under a minute--while defect information is being collected--enabling fabs to monitor both process variability and defectivity simultaneously.
In addition, KLA-Tencor also rolled out a high-resolution surface topography profiling system, extending critical measurement capability to the 45-nm semiconductor device generation. Featuring diamond styli down to 20-nm radius and a lower-noise platform for enhanced measurement sensitivity, the HRP-350 system offers chip makers the ability to monitor significantly smaller lateral and vertical dimensions.
Another player, Xitronix Corp. (Austin, Texas), is introducing the XP450 active dose and strain measurement tool at Semicon West. This product allows semiconductor manufacturers to quantitatively and determine whether critical steps in the semiconductor manufacturing process have been successfully completed.
Xitronix's technology and products provide manufacturers of advanced semiconductors with the capabilities to directly, rapidly and non-destructively characterize the electronic and optical properties of semiconductor nanostructures during the manufacturing process.
"The XP450 offers manufacturers like AMD and IBM the best of front-end process control capabilities," says Judd Chism, CEO of Xitronix, in a statement. "In today's complex manufacturing environment, this metrology is absolutely critical. Xitronix's photo-reflectance technology has been proven effective for precision characterization of activated dopant in ultra-shallow junctions and of strain in ultra-thin strained Si layers.
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