NIST uncovers potential problem for semiconductor lithography. (News Briefs).NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology, Washington, DC, www.nist.gov) The standards-defining agency of the U.S. government, formerly the National Bureau of Standards. It is one of three agencies that fall under the Technology Administration (www.technology. researchers have uncovered a potentially serious optical problem affecting designs for future generations of semiconductor manufacturing equipment using deep ultraviolet light Ultraviolet light A portion of the light spectrum not visible to the eye. Two bands of the UV spectrum, UVA and UVB, are used to treat psoriasis and other skin diseases. . The "Moore's Law "The number of transistors and resistors on a chip doubles every 18 months." By Intel co-founder Gordon Moore regarding the pace of semiconductor technology. He made this famous comment in 1965 when there were approximately 60 devices on a chip. " phenomenon the doubling of chip complexity with each generation--has been possible largely because of continual advances in lithography, allowing manufacturers to image and process integrated circuits Integrated circuits Miniature electronic circuits produced within and upon a single semiconductor crystal, usually silicon. Integrated circuits range in complexity from simple logic circuits and amplifiers, about 1/20 in. (1. with smaller and smaller dimensions. Reaching very small dimensions requires using very short-wavelength light. Current state-of-the-art production processes use deep ultraviolet lasers at 248 nm and 193 nm to image circuits with critical features as small as 130 nm to 150 nm. The next major steps for lithography are expected to be systems using 157 am light, ultimately achieving feature sizes in the range of 70 nm. Some of the optics for 193 nm and all of the optics for 157 nm lithography are made of calcium fluoride, one of only a few materials that are transparent at 157 nm. A NIST physicist recently showed that calcium fluoride is inherently birefringent An optical property of a material that causes the polarizations of light to travel at different speeds. See dispersion. in the deep ultraviolet--meaning that the crystal refracts light differently depending on the polarization of the light. Other NIST physicists confirmed these results theoretically. The practical import for designers is that a calcium fluoride lens will not focus properly without, at the very least, careful control of the light as it enters the lens and a design that accounts for this intrinsic birefringence Birefringence The splitting which a wavefront experiences when a wave disturbance is propagated in an anisotropic material; also called double refraction. In anisotropic substances the velocity of a wave is a function of displacement direction. . This is a difficult problem given that there are about 20 such lens elements in a typical stepper step·per n. 1. One that steps, especially in a fast or spirited manner. 2. Informal A dancer. Noun 1. or optical lithography lens. The modeling software used to design such systems is being modified to account for the effects of birefringenc, but it is not yet ready. NIST researchers are pursuing potential solutions to the problem involving mixed crystals to compensate for the birefringence effect. Details of the findings were first made public at the International SEMATECH-sponsored International Symposium on 157 am Lithography. Media Contact: Michael Baum, (301) 975-2763; michael.baum@nist.gov. |
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