SEOUL, South Korea — Hyundai Electronics has developed an argon fluoride (ArF) photoresist technology that it says will enable circuit to be built at line widths down to 0.09 micron. A squeeze to 0.07 micron may also be attainable through the use of resolution enhancement technology, the company said.
Texas Instruments Inc. and Intel Corp. have reportedly begun testing the new ArF photoresist after the International Sematech consortium (Austin, Texas) evaluated it and confirmed that the technique did produce feature sizes down to 0.09 micron, Hyundai said.
Hyundai Electronics, which developed ArF photoresists for 0.13-micron process technology in the late 1990s, worked with Dongjin Semichem, a semiconductor materials supplier in Korea, on a 0.10-micron approach. Hyundai said it expects to receive royalties on the core semiconductor lithography technology by transferring the technology to other manufacturers.
Korean chips makers seeking to move to features below 0.10 micron have been focusing on development of photoresist technology based on ArF at 193-nanometer wavelengths.
Hyundai's new photoresist material is expected to play in a new market in semiconductor materials estimated to be worth $1 billion by 2006.
"Japanese semiconductor companies have worked jointly with Japanese semiconductor materials suppliers in order to develop technology and construct an entire semiconductor technology infrastructure, which has ultimately placed Japan in a leadership position with world-class semiconductor technology," said Ki-Ho Baik, the lithography strategy manager of Hyundai's ArF production project. "Emulating this joint development strategy introduced by the Japanese companies, Hyundai is currently working not only with Dongjin Semichem but also with several other suppliers on the development of semiconductor materials. The outcome of this research will be announced in several months," he added, predicting that "Korean material suppliers will assume global leadership in ArF lithography as a result."
Global competition to find new lithography techniques has been heating up in recent years as existing techniques hit physical limits. For instance, U.S. companies along with the Department of Energy have formed the Extreme Ultraviolet LLC consortium to develop new lithography tools. And the European Community is funding an ion projection lithography initiative as part of its Medea Project.
— Exclusive to EE Times by Chom Dan Inc. (Seoul, South Korea).
