euv lithography

Extreme ultraviolet lithography (also known as EUV or EUVL) is an optical lithography technology used in semiconductor device fabrication to make integrated circuits (ICs). It uses extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths near 13.5 nm, using a laser-pulsed tin (Sn) droplet plasma (Sn ions in the ionic states from Sn IX to Sn XIV give photon emission spectral peaks around 13.5 nm from 4p⁶4dⁿ – 4p⁵4dⁿ⁺¹ + 4d^n-14f ionic state transitions.), to produce a pattern by using a reflective photomask to expose a substrate covered by photoresist. It is currently applied only in the most advanced semiconductor device fabrication.

As 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. 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. 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. Samsung’s 5 nm node is lithographically the same design rule as its 7 nm node, with a minimum metal pitch of 36 nm

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via mikko hypponen‘s tweet [https://twitter.com/mikko/status/1685593136058253312?s=20]:

It’s magic. They hit a molten tin droplet in midflight with a laser. The laser vaporizes the tin into a plasma, emitting a spectrum of photonic energy. From this, they harvest the required wavelength to project a pattern onto a silicon wafer. #ASML [https://spectrum.ieee.org/high-na-euv]

links to july 2023 article:

THIS MACHINE COULD KEEP MOORE’S LAW ON TRACK – The next trick to tinier transistors is high-numerical-aperture EUV lithography

OVER THE LAST HALF-CENTURY, we’ve come to think of Moore’s Law—the roughly biennial doubling of the number of transistors in a given area of silicon, the gains that drive computing forward—as something that just happens, as though it were a natural, inevitable process, akin to evolution or aging. The reality, of course, is much different. Keeping pace with Moore’s Law requires almost unimaginable expenditures of time, energy, and human ingenuity—thousands of people on multiple continents and endless acres of some of the most complex machinery on the planet

Perhaps the most essential of these machines performs extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) photolithography. EUV lithography, the product of decades of R&D, is now the driving technology behind the past two generations of cutting-edge chips, used in every top-end smartphone, tablet, laptop, and server in the last three years. Yet Moore’s Law must march on, and chipmakers continue to advance their road maps, meaning they’ll need to shrink device geometries even further.

High-NA EUV should be ready for commercial use in 2025, and chipmakers are depending on its capabilities to keep their promised advances through the end of this decade

EUV necessitates an entirely new way to generate light. It’s a remarkably complex process that involves hitting molten tin droplets in midflight with a powerful CO₂ laser. The laser vaporizes the tin into a plasma, emitting a spectrum of photonic energy. From this spectrum, the EUV optics harvest the required 13.5-nm wavelength and direct it through a series of mirrors before it is reflected off a patterned mask to project that pattern onto the wafer

To ensure the same productivity levels with the half-size field, we had to redevelop the system’s reticle and wafer stages—the platforms that hold the mask and wafer, respectively—and move them in sync with each other as the scanning process takes place. The redesign resulted in nanometer-precision stages with acceleration improved by a factor of four.

The first high-NA EUV system, the ASML EXE:5000, will be installed in a new lab that we’re opening jointly with the Belgium-based nanoelectronics research facility Imec, in early 2024. This lab will allow customers, mask makers, photoresist suppliers, and others to develop the infrastructure needed to make high-NA EUV a reality.

And it is essential that we do make it a reality, because high-NA EUV is a critical component in keeping Moore’s Law alive. Getting to 0.55 NA won’t be the final step, though. From there, ASML, Zeiss, and the entire semiconductor ecosystem will be stretching even further toward technologies that are better, faster, and innovative in ways we can hardly imagine yet..t