Mask Making Issues With EUV


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss lithography and photomask trends with Bryan Kasprowicz, director of technology and strategy and a distinguished member of the technical staff at Photronics; Thomas Scheruebl, director of strategic business development and product strategy at Zeiss; Noriaki Nakayamada, senior technologist at NuFlare; and Aki Fujimura, chief executive of D2S. What fol... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Fab tools The confidence level of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography continues to grow as the technology moves into production, but the EUV mask infrastructure remains a mixed picture, according to new surveys released by the eBeam Initiative. D2S has developed new hardware and software that enables a long-awaited technology--full-chip masks using inverse lithography technology (ILT). ... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers and OEMs Taiwan specialty foundry vendor Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) will acquire GlobalFoundries’ Fab 3E facility in Singapore for $236 million. Fab 3E manages a monthly capacity of approximately 35,000 200mm wafers. The transaction includes buildings, facilities, and equipment, as well as IP associated with GF’s MEMS business. VIS currently has three 200mm fa... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers Shares of Intel fell amid lackluster results for the company, according to a report from CNBC. But Intel is also boosting its capital spending to $15.5 billion, according to the report. Here’s more on Intel from PC World. Meanwhile, Intel is expanding its research fab in Oregon, dubbed D1X, according to a report from The Oregonian. The company is in the process of building an ... » read more

E-beam Inspection Makes Inroads


E-beam inspection is gaining traction in critical areas in fab production as it is becoming more difficult to find tiny defects with traditional methods at advanced nodes. Applied Materials, ASML/HMI and others are developing new e-beam inspection tools and/or techniques to solve some of the more difficult defect issues in the fab. [gettech id="31057" t_name="E-beam"] inspection is one of tw... » read more

Searching For EUV Mask Defects


Chipmakers hope to insert extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography at 7nm and/or 5nm, but several challenges need to be solved before this technology can be used in production. One lingering issue that is becoming more worrisome is how to find [gettech id="31045" comment="EUV"] mask defects. That isn't the only issue, of course. The industry continues to work on the power source and resists. Bu... » read more

Why Fabs Worry About Tool Parts


Achieving high yields with acceptable costs is becoming much more difficult as chipmakers migrate to next-generation 3D NAND and finFET devices—but not just because of rising complexity or lithography issues. To fabricate an advanced logic chip, for example, a wafer moves from one piece of equipment to another in what amounts to 1,000 process steps or more in a fab. Any glitch with the equ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: July 25


Metrology for the intelligence community The semiconductor industry continues to move full speed ahead with traditional chip scaling. There are several challenges in the arena. One of the big but lessor known challenges is metrology. Metrology, the science of characterizing and measuring films and structures, is becoming more complex, challenging and expensive at each node. Looking to solv... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: June 27


World’s brightest laser The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has set the unofficial record for the world’s brightest laser. Researchers have focused a laser at a brightness of 1 billion times greater than the surface of the sun. This feat was accomplished using the so-called Diocles Laser at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The laser has a combination of peak power and a repetition ra... » read more

High-Stakes Litho Game


The commercial introduction of EUV looks all but assured these days. There is enough history to show it works. Uptime and throughput are improving, and systems are shipping today. The question now is how to measure its success. In the short-term, this is a fairly simple financial exercise for companies like ASML and Zeiss, which have been closely collaborating to get these massive systems ou... » read more

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