European Consortium Bets On EUVL Technology For ICs

By Nicole Hemsoth

January 5, 2007

With semiconductor structures forecast to shrink to as small as 32 nanometres by 2009, a European consortium (More Moore) of manufacturers, research institutes and universities conclude that Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUVL) is set to be the technique of choice for high-volume semiconductor manufacturing.

Integrated circuits (ICs) today contain structures no larger than 65 billionths of a metre (nanometres or nm), about the distance a fingernail grows every minute. Yet in the search for greater performance and functionality from their chips, semiconductor manufacturers try to cram ever more functions into smaller spaces. 65 nm structures are expected to more than halve in size by 2009, then fall to 22 nm by 2011.

To print such tiny structures on silicon wafers, most electronics manufacturers expect to call on EUVL technology. Operating at a 13.5nm light wavelength, this technology still presents serious technical challenges, even though it has been studied for 12 years. If chip-makers can overcome these challenges, they could work at higher resolutions than is currently possible with 193nm wavelength photolithography.

“From 2010, EUVL will be used for mass manufacturing at the 32nm scale,” says Robert Hartman, coordinator of the IST project More Moore. His confident prediction springs from technical breakthroughs in the project, among them more powerful light sources and better light projection.

In More Moore, research teams from eight different countries focused either on the manufacturing equipment challenges or the environment around them. The equipment side involved preparing new technologies for 32nm EUVL. The environmental side focused on research into advanced light sources, new types of optics, resists and masks.

“EUVL is the sole technology suitable for optical masks,” says Hartman, referring to the devices that shield certain areas of a chip during the manufacturing process. “The only alternative is electron-beam lithography. But that is very time-consuming — producing at these levels of integration at best four wafers an hour. With EUVL, we should eventually produce up to 130 wafers/hour, matching the rate of today's lithography technologies.”

The sophisticated new equipment required for EUVL will probably cost more than current technology. But Hartman remarks that competing lithography technologies, such as immersion and double-exposure, are also very expensive.

“I believe chip manufacturers would be happy to pay up to a third more than they do today, if they were able to double the density of transistors on a wafer,” he says, noting that current chips contain up to a billion transistors. “EUVL is relatively price competitive for mass production — particularly for the flash-memory chips used in goods such as cameras and telephones.”

More Moore has notched up several world-beating achievements on the optics side. For example it addressed the difficulty of making a very bright light by developing a revolutionary new EUV plasma light source, which is heated to 300,000 degrees Celsius. This light source uses tin as fuel for the short-flash discharge.

Because of the need for very clean equipment, researchers developed a special debris-mitigation system. This unique new system calls on a foil trap, gas jet and/or electro-magnetic fields to reduce the stream of tin evaporated during the discharge.

Under the project, the partners also upped the light source's power output from 120 to 800 watts — a significant milestone towards the EUV target of one kilowatt, as required for volume production of semiconductors.

Another notable achievement was the development of improved high-tech mirrors, used for projecting light onto the wafer. “Our mirrors have very high reflectivity, are highly stable and are cleanable for long periods,” notes the coordinator. “They offer an accuracy of 0.1 nm, which is astonishing given that the distance between two silicon atoms is three times larger.” There were several other important project achievements. Among them were improved lifetimes for EUVL optical components, plus the development of new and experimental materials for making a molecular resist (an energy-sensitive material used in lithography).

For the resist, says the coordinator, “We expose molecules rather than a polymer during the lithographic process. Our goal is to achieve sensitivity, line-edge roughness and resolution at the same time.”

More Moore has been extended by three months to March 2007, giving the partners time to carry out further development on an advanced photoemission electron microscope. The team has developed a prototype which is capable of detecting very tiny defects on wafers through smart-lens refocusing. The new instrument would be able to spot 10nm features, giving it the ability to detect dirt on masks without destroying the mask — something a conventional electron microscope cannot do.

As well as promoting its results at events around the world — most recently at the Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUVL) Symposium in October 2006 at Barcelona — the project is also generating numerous European patents in lithography. It has greatly advanced European leadership in the highly competitive sector of electronics-manufacturing technology, Hartman says. “We believe our new plasma light source is a year ahead of any competitors.”

—–

Source: IST Results

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

Nvidia Appoints Andy Grant as EMEA Director of Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI

March 22, 2024

Nvidia recently appointed Andy Grant as Director, Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). With over 25 years of high-performance computing (HPC) experience, Grant brings a Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire