IBM and Albany partners unlock new yield benchmarks for EUV patterning
Working at NY CREATES's Albany NanoTech Complex, a team of researchers report the newest yields for Low NA and High NA EUV patterning, which shows a pathway to sub-2 nm nodes.
Working at NY CREATES's Albany NanoTech Complex, a team of researchers report the newest yields for Low NA and High NA EUV patterning, which shows a pathway to sub-2 nm nodes.
Over the last few decades, the exponential explosion in computing power has relied on ever shrinking transistor dimensions. The size reduction of the smallest features patterned on silicon wafers has been largely enabled by advances in lithography, a process which uses light, a mask as a design template, and a photosensitive material cast on the wafer to define patterns. Innovations in lithography equipment in the last 40 years have allowed us to print smaller and smaller features by using shorter wavelengths of light and by increasing the numerical aperture (or NA) of the machines’ optics. However, the evolution of these machines alone is insufficient to achieve their ultimate resolution in real world devices.
The semiconductor industry has also relied on innovations in computational techniques, mask, material, and processes, as well as novel patterning schemes. Taken together, these all help improve the yield (or number of usable chips) at the desired dimensions and tolerances for the pattern on a wafer.
