SEMATECH to Demonstrate EUV Leadership, Technical Breakthroughs at SPIE.

AUSTIN, Texas -- A comprehensive overview of SEMATECH's world-leading extreme ultraviolet (EUV) program will highlight a key session in emerging technologies during the SPIE Advanced Lithography conferences next week in San Jose, CA.

Among the global semiconductor community's leading gatherings, the SPIE conference series attracts thousands of specialists in various aspects of lithography, one of the most challenging areas of advanced microchip production. SEMATECH engineers will dominate a session of SPIE's Emerging Lithographic Technologies XI conference, demonstrating breakthrough results in defect-related inspection, reticle handling, and cleaning.

"Our presentations and papers will show that SEMATECH is leading the development of EUV infrastructure," said Michael Lercel, lithography director. "Results from the new industry-best mask blank defect inspection system show defect detectability below 40 nm, which is essential for moving mask blank technology forward and enabling EUV Lithography. We are also very excited to show we have achieved nearly defect-free reticle handling for shipping, storage, and vacuum transfer. Some people thought this would be impossible."

The SEMATECH EUV review will begin at 10:40 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 27, during Session 2 of SPIE's Emerging Lithographic Technologies XI conference. Dr. Stefan Wurm, EUV Strategy Program manager will present the overview of SEMATECH's overall EUV effort which includes the Mask Blank Development Center (MBDC) and Resist Test Center (RTC) in Albany, NY.

Future details on mask inspection will be available in the Advanced Mask session, beginning at 1:50 p.m.:

* Analysis of the effects of phase defects in wafer CDs using EUV microexposure printing and actinic imaging. SEMATECH engineer Hak-Seung Han will lead the presentation.

* EUV and non-EUV inspection of reticle defect repair sites. SEMATECH presenters will include Phil Seidel, Patrick Kearney, Hak-Seung Han, and Obert Wood.

* EUV mask-blank inspection at SEMATECH's MBDC using the Lastertec M7360 system. Among the presenters will be Patrick Kearney, Wonil Cho, and Chan-Uk Jeon.

Additional SEMATECH-related EUV presentations will be offered at other times:

* 8 a.m. Thursday, March 1: New requirements for cleaning EUV mask blanks, with Abbas Rastegar and Pat Marmillion

* 1:40 p.m. March 1: Status and path to a final EUVL reticle protection and handling solution, with Long He, Kevin Orvek, Phil Seidel, and Stefan Wurm

Other SEMATECH-led presentations will include:

* 8 a.m. March 1, Metrology, Inspection and Process Control conference: SEMATECH managers Ben Bunday and John Allgair will lead a discussion titled, "The coming of age of tilt-CD SEM."

* 10:35 a.m. Friday, March 2, Optical conference: SEMATECH engineers Emil Piscani, Shane Palmer, and Chris Van Peski will discuss their attainment of sub-45 nm features using azimuthal polarization on a 1.3 numerical aperture immersion microstepper.

SEMATECH technologists also will offer several poster sessions and will deliver 26 papers at four of the SPIE Advanced Lithography conferences.

SEMATECH is the world's catalyst for accelerating the commercialization of technology innovations into manufacturing solutions. By setting global direction, creating opportunities for flexible collaboration, and conducting strategic R&D, SEMATECH delivers significant leverage to our semiconductor and emerging technology partners. In short, we are accelerating the next technology revolution. For more information, please visit our website at www.sematech.org. SEMATECH, the SEMATECH logo, AMRC, Advanced Materials Research Center, ATDF, the ATDF logo, Advanced Technology Development Facility, ISMI and International SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative are servicemarks of SEMATECH, Inc.