Nova (Nasdaq: NVMI) today announced that its co-authored paper with IBM Research on “In-Line Raman Spectroscopy for Stacked Nanosheet Device Manufacturing” has been selected as the winner of the Diana Nyyssonen award for “best paper at SPIE‘s 2021 Advanced Lithography Symposia.” The award was granted to Nova and IBM on the opening day of the 2022 conference. The paper is a result of a continuous collaboration between the companies that drove numerous innovative joint development programs to enhance advanced chip manufacturing. The paper demonstrates the novel technologies Nova promotes in advanced process control by utilizing its unique and differentiated solutions. As part of the collaboration with IBM Research, Nova installed its most advanced portfolio at IBM Research’s lab in Albany, New York.
Monitoring and controlling strain in next-generation devices within intricate nanoscale structures is a new challenge. A suitable non-destructive and fast in-line technique is critical for successful research and development and manufacturing. The joint effort demonstrates in-line Raman spectroscopy for non-destructive strain metrology at multiple critical process steps throughout the front-end-of-line (FEOL) manufacturing cycle of stacked nanosheet devices. This paper establishes the importance of in-line Raman and support the growing demand for materials metrology in high volume manufacturing.
“Our in-line Raman spectroscopy work with Nova supports critical advances in logic scaling that offer new pathways of managing strain metrology for nanosheet transistors,” said Dr. Huiming Bu, Vice President, Hybrid Cloud Technology Research & Albany Operations at IBM Research. “This joint effort is indicative of the collaborative ecosystem IBM and partners have cultivated in Albany to steer our leading edge logic technology R&D roadmap.”
“We are honored to be selected for this prestigious award in collaboration with IBM Research,” said Dr. Shay Wolfling, Chief Technology Officer of Nova. “controlling Nanosheets strain at critical process steps is enabled by our innovative Nova ELIPSONTM Raman Spectroscopy solution that is designed to measure materials properties such as stress, crystallinity, and surface properties for both Memory and Logic devices. The joint work with IBM Research has demonstrated that through collaboration with our customers, we can introduce new technologies, offering groundbreaking solutions to enable the transition to next-generation manufacturing.”