7nm Lithography Choices

By Mark LaPedus - 07 Mar, 2016 - Comments: 2

Chipmakers are ramping up their 16nm/14nm logic processes, with 10nm expected to move into early production later this year. Barring a major breakthrough in lithography, chipmakers are using today’s 193nm immersion and multiple patterning for both 16/14nm and 10nm. Now, chipmakers are focusing on the lithography options for 7nm. For this, they hope to use a combination of two technologies ... » read more

Inside Multi-Beam E-Beam Lithography

By Mark LaPedus - 19 Nov, 2015 - Comments: 4

Semiconductor Engineering sat down with David Lam, chairman of Multibeam, a developer of multi-beam e-beam tools for direct-write lithography applications. Lam is also a venture capitalist. He founded Lam Research in 1980, but left as an employee in 1985. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: How has the equipment business changed over the years and what’s the state of the i... » read more

The Price Of Consolidation

By Ed Sperling - 24 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 0

Consolidation is causing far-reaching changes across the global semiconductor ecosystem due to the size of companies being bought and the dearth of startups to replenish those being acquired. Coupled with the rising cost and difficulty of shrinking features down to advanced process nodes—many argue that is the largest driver of consolidation—the market dynamics for who's buying IP, EDA t... » read more

Finding Defects Is Getting Harder

By Mark LaPedus - 17 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 1

Chipmakers are plotting out a strategy to scale the transistor to 10nm and beyond. Migrating to these nodes presents a number of challenges, but one issue is starting to gain more attention in the market—killer defects. Defects have always been problematic in the yield ramp for chip designs, but the ability to find them is becoming more difficult and expensive at each node. And it will be... » read more

Complementary E Beam Lithography

By eBeam Initiative - 19 Aug, 2015 - Comments: 0

Multibeam Chairman David Lam looks at complementary E-Beam lithography (CEBL) and the impact of 1D design and pitch division. [youtube vid=nyvplBl4HA4] » read more

Speeding Up E-beam Inspection

By Mark LaPedus - 18 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 0

Wafer inspection, the science of finding killer defects in chips, is reaching a critical juncture. Optical inspection, the workhorse technology in the fab, is being stretched to the limit at advanced nodes. And e-beam inspection can find tiny defects, but it remains slow in terms of throughput. So to fill the gap, the industry has been working on a new class of multiple beam e-beam inspectio... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing

By Mark LaPedus - 12 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 0

Christopher Rolland, an analyst at FBR, made a startling statement in a recent report. “At the pace of consolidation set thus far this year, 32% of all U.S. publicly traded semiconductor companies would be acquired in 2015! While this run-rate is not likely sustainable and should slow as the year progresses, we still expect ~15% consolidation rates for the remainder of this cycle (above low-t... » read more

Next EUV Challenge: Mask Inspection

By Mark LaPedus - 16 Apr, 2015 - Comments: 2

Extreme ultraviolet ([gettech id="31045" comment="EUV"]) lithography is still not ready for prime time, but the technology finally is moving in the right direction. The EUV light source, for example, is making progress after years of delays and setbacks. Now, amid a possible breakthrough in EUV, the industry is revisiting a nagging issue and asking a simple question: How do you inspect EUV p... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: March 24

By Mark LaPedus - 24 Mar, 2015 - Comments: 0

Mouse brains to multi-beam At the recent SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, Sematech provided an update on its multi-beam, e-beam inspection program. The goal is to develop a next-generation inspection tool, which could be faster than traditional e-beam inspection and could one day displace brightfield inspection. “Optical inspection is having trouble detecting particles that are small... » read more

Maglen: Multi-Beam E-Beam Inspection

By Mark LaPedus - 16 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 1

Wafer inspection, the science of finding defects on a wafer, is becoming more challenging and costly at each node. In fact, the ability to detect sub-30nm defects is challenging with today’s inspection tools, which are primarily based on two separate technologies—optical and e-beam. In the inspection flow, chipmakers first use e-beam inspection, mainly for engineering analysis. E-beam is... » read more

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Knowledge Centers
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