Extreme Ultra-Violet Lithography (EUVL) keeps hurting my brain. Just when I can understand how it could be used in profitable commercial high-volume manufacturing (HVM) I hear something that seriously strains my brain. First it was the mirrors and mask in…
Patterning with Films and Chemicals
Somewhere around 40nm is the limit on the smallest half-pitch feature that can be formed with a single-exposure of 193-nm wavelength laser light using water immersion (193i) lithography. While multiple-patterning (MP) is needed to achieve tighter half-pitches, smaller features at…
Litho becomes Patterning
Once upon a time, lithographic (litho) processes were all that IC fabs needed to transfer the design-intent into silicon chips. Over the last 10-15 years, however, IC device structural features have continued to shrink below half the wavelength of the…
Single-electron Molecular Switch 4nm Across
A molecule rotating on the surface of a crystal can function as a tunnel-gate of a transistor, as shown by researchers from the Paul-Drude-Institut für Festkörperelektronik (PDI) and the Freie Universität Berlin (FUB), Germany, the NTT Basic Research Laboratories (NTT-BRL),…
ASML Books Production EUV Orders
TSMC commits to two tools for delivery next year Maybe, just maybe, ASML Holding N.V. (ASML) has made the near-impossible a reality by creating a cost-effective Extreme Ultra-Violet (EUV @ ~13.5nm wavelength) all-reflective lithographic tool. The company has announced that…
Moore’s Law is Dead – (Part 3) Where?
…we reach the atomic limits of device scaling. At ~4nm pitch we run out of room “at the bottom,” after patterning costs explode at 45nm pitch. Lead bongo player of physics Richard Feynman famously said, “There’s plenty of room at…
