This made the once small company ASML the world leader in the production of scanners and monopolist in this cutting edge technology and resulted in a record turnover of 18.6 billion € in 2021, dwarfing their competitors Canon and Nikon who were denied IP access. The scanner uses Zeiss optics, which that company calls "the most precise mirrors in the world" and are produced by locating imperfections and then knocking off individual molecules with techniques such as ion beam figuring. As of 2022, a scanner produces up to 200 wafers per hour. The first prototype in 2006 produced one wafer in 23 hours. This led MIT Technology Review to name it 'the machine that saved Moore's law'. īy 2018 Dutch company ASML succeeded in deploying the EUV-LLC IP after several decades of developmental research, with incorporation of European-funded EUCLIDES (Extreme UV Concept Lithography Development System) and long-standing partner German optics manufacturer ZEISS and synchrotron light source supplier Oxford Instruments. In 2001 SVG was acquired by ASML, leaving only a single company as the sole benefactor of the critical technology. Intel, Canon and Nikon (leaders in the field at the time), as well as ASML and Silicon Valley Group (SVG) all sought licensing, however Congress denied Japanese companies the necessary permission as they were perceived as strong technical competitors at the time, and should not benefit from taxpayer-funded research at the expense of American companies. The CRADA consisted of a consortium of private companies and the Labs, manifested as an entity called EUV-LLC. The results of this successful effort were disseminated via a public/private partnership Cooperative R&D Agreement (CRADA) with the invention and rights wholly owned by the US government, but licensed and distributed under approval by DOE and Congress. To address this scientific challenge, researchers at several United States Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories (specifically Livermore, Berkeley, and Sandia) were funded in the 1990s to perform basic research into the technical obstacles. Then leading producers of steppers Canon and Nikon stopped development, and some predicted the end of Moore's law. EUV is absorbed by glass and even air, so instead of using lenses, as before, to focus the beams of light, mirrors in a vacuum would be needed and a reliable production of EUV was also problematic. The EUV technology was considered impossible by many. The next step, going even smaller, was dubbed Extreme UV or EUV. Later UV light was used, with wavelength of at first 365nm (mercury "i line"), then excimer wavelengths first of 248 nm ( krypton fluoride laser) and then 193 nm ( argon fluoride laser), which was called deep UV. In the 1960s, visible light was used for IC-production, with wavelengths as small as 435 nm (mercury "g line"). Samsung's 5 nm node is lithographically the same design rule as its 7 nm node, with a minimum metal pitch of 36 nm. At IEDM 2020, TSMC reported its 5 nm node minimum metal pitch to be reduced 30% (to ~28 nm) from that of its 7 nm node, which was 40 nm. At the 2019 International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), TSMC reported use of EUV for its 5 nm node in contact, via, metal line, and cut layers, where the cuts can be applied to fins, gates or metal lines. It is currently applied only in the most advanced semiconductor device fabrication.Īs of 2023, ASML Holding is the only company who produces and sells EUV systems for chip production, targeting 5 nm and 3 nm process nodes. It uses extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths near 13.5 nm, using a laser-pulsed tin (Sn) droplet plasma, to produce a pattern by using a reflective photomask to expose a substrate covered by photoresist. Lithography using wavelength 13.5 nm UV lightĮxtreme ultraviolet lithography (also known as EUV or EUVL) is an optical lithography technology used in semiconductor device fabrication to make integrated circuits (ICs).
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