Your cart is currently empty!
Achtergrond
The expanding package of options for ASML’s scanners
Reading time: 7 minutes
A few dials on the machine are no longer enough to ensure successful chip fabrication. Through models and measurement devices, ASML is lending its customers a helping hand. The company recently added e-beam metrology to the toolkit.
The delay in developing EUV lithography means every nanometre of resolution has to be squeezed from 193-nm light. That’s why things have started to happen that aren’t actually possible: for today’s most modern chips, structures are being printed that are some ten times smaller than the wavelength being used to print them. ‘A lithographer in the 1990s would have called you crazy,’ says Jim Kavanagh, ASML’s senior director for product management. ‘But it works, thanks to holistic lithography.’
Holistic lithography is the term ASML uses for a suite of add-ons in and around its scanners, which in a nutshell ensure that the structures on the masks are printed correctly and result in working chips. These add-ons use and supplement the features a standard machine already offers.
This article is exclusively available to premium members of Bits&Chips. Already a premium member? Please log in. Not yet a premium member? Become one for only €15 and enjoy all the benefits.
