Bell Labs uses electron beams to make chip features 250 atoms wide.

MURRAY HILL, NJ--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 8, 1996--Bell Labs researchers have used a new electron beam system to print microchip features just 250 atoms wide, or four times smaller than can be achieved with current chip manufacturing techniques.

The demonstration suggests that chip manufacturers will be able to keep packing more and more devices onto chips even after current manufacturing technologies have reached their fundamental limits, which will likely happen around 2005.

"With current techniques," said Lloyd Harriott, head of the Bell Labs research team, "chip designs ultimately will be limited by the wavelength of the ultraviolet light used to print features on silicon."

By contrast, the new system, which Bell Labs calls the SCALPEL(R) system, uses high-energy electron beams to expose patterns on silicon wafers. Since the electrons' wavelength is a million times smaller than that of ultraviolet light, it is possible to print much smaller line widths, permitting the manufacture of faster and much more powerful devices.

"The SCALPEL system is the first working electron beam system that can produce feature lines at 0.08 micron widths," Harriott said. "We have successfully demonstrated the concept of electron beam lithography."

"Innovations such as this help keep Lucent Technologies at the leading edge of the semiconductor industry," said Mark Melliar-Smith, chief scientist for Lucent's Microelectronics Group. "Nearly 50 years ago, Bell Labs invented the transistor. Now, it's inventing the processes for making the world's smallest transistors. Of course, a great deal of additional work needs to be done before e-beam lithography is a commercial reality, and before we will be building 0.08-micron chips routinely. But we're building a cathedral, and this work is one of the keystones."

Work on electron beam lithography began in the 1970s. Work on the first Bell Labs SCALPEL system began in 1989. The current SCALPEL system, under development for the last two years, projected its first electron beam on May 12, 1996. The 0.08 micron features were produced just three weeks later on June 5.

Funding for the project was provided by Lucent Technologies, by AT&T, and by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), a research arm of the federal government. While most of the SCALPEL machine was fabricated at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., the electron gun was manufactured by the Etec Corp. of Hayward Calif., and the wafer registration system was developed by the Anorad Corp. in Hauppage, N.Y.

Bell Labs is the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies (NYSE:LU), which designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, consumer and business telephone systems and microelectronic components.

NOTE TO EDITORS: A technical news release on the SCALPEL electron beam system containing additional information for the electronics trade press is available at http://www.lucent.com/press/

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