Optical Lithography, Take Two


By Mark LaPedus It’s the worst-kept secret in the industry. Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography has missed the initial stages of the 10nm logic and 1xnm NAND flash nodes. Chipmakers hope to insert EUV by the latter stages of 10nm or by 7nm, but vendors are not counting on EUV in the near term and are preparing their back-up plans. Barring a breakthrough with EUV or other technology, IC ... » read more

Experts At The Table: Issues In Lithography


By Mark LaPedus Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down to discuss future lithography challenges with Juan Rey, senior director of engineering at Mentor Graphics; Aki Fujimura, chairman and chief executive at D2S; and Tatsuo Enami, general manager for the sales division at Gigaphoton. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SMD: What is the general state of the next-genera... » read more

Behind The Mask


By Mark LaPedus Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down to discuss the current and future photomask manufacturing challenges with Franklin Kalk, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Toppan Photomasks, one of the world’s largest merchant mask makers. SMD: The outlook for the photomask industry is for 2% growth in 2012. Do you agree with that? Kalk: That’s ... » read more

Experts At The Table: Issues In Lithography


By Mark LaPedus Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down to discuss future lithography challenges with Juan Rey, senior director of engineering at Mentor Graphics; Aki Fujimura, chairman and chief executive at D2S; and Tatsuo Enami, general manager for the sales division at Gigaphoton. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SMD: What are the big challenges in lithography?... » read more

DSA: High Stakes Game Of Alphabet Soup


By Mark LaPedus Directed self-assembly (DSA) is making progress for potential use in semiconductor production, but the industry must make some major advances in a sometimes forgotten and unsung segment—materials. DSA is a complementary patterning technology that makes use of block copolymer materials to enable fine pitches in chip designs. But today’s block copolymers based on poly (MMA... » read more

DSA Moves To R&D Pilot Lines


By Mark LaPedus Directed self-assembly (DSA), an alternative lithography technology that makes use of block copolymers, is still in the R&D stage for semiconductor production. But as the exotic patterning technology continues to make astounding progress, there are signs the IC industry is accelerating its efforts to bring DSA from the lab to the fab. In fact, DSA suddenly has become a ... » read more

Experts At The Table: Multipatterning


By Ed Sperling Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down with Michael White, physical verification product line manager at Mentor Graphics; Luigi Capodieci, R&D fellow at GlobalFoundries; Lars Liebmann, IBM distinguished engineer; Rob Aitken, ARM fellow; Jean-Pierre Geronimi, CAD director at STMicroelectronics; and Kuang-Kuo Lin, director of foundry design enablement at Samsung Ele... » read more

Experts At The Table: Multipatterning


By Ed Sperling Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down with Michael White, physical verification product line manager at Mentor Graphics; Luigi Capodieci, R&D fellow at GlobalFoundries; Lars Liebmann, IBM distinguished engineer; Rob Aitken, ARM fellow; Jean-Pierre Geronimi, CAD director at STMicroelectronics; and Kuang-Kuo Lin, director of foundry design enablement at Samsung Ele... » read more

The Ins And Outs Of Directed Self-Assembly


By Mark LaPedus H.S. Phillip Wong, professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University and one of the leading experts on directed self-assembly (DSA) technology, sat down to discuss the future of this approach with Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design. With funding from the Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC), Stanford is exploring contact-hole patterning and the design infrastructur... » read more

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