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| Cooperation agreement |
| Immersion Lithography: Agreement reached to accelerate development of advanced photomask verification technology | Downloads and Links | ||
| International SEMATECH teams with Carl Zeiss SMT on actinic mask defect review tool for 193 nm immersion lithography | RTF Documents
english (32 KB)Further Information | ||
| Oberkochen, 09.06.2004. International Sematech and Carl Zeiss SMT today announced their agreement to support and further enable the semiconductor industryīs roadmap for 193nm immersion lithography (193 nm). SEMATECH will charter the semiconductor metrology systems division of Carl Zeiss SMT to design and develop a next-generation Aerial Image Measurement System (AIMS™) for defect review of 193 nm immersion lithography photomasks. This 193i nm AIMS™ platform will represent an enabling module critical to the development and manufacturing of photomasks targeted at the 65 nm and 45 nm technology node. A first alpha tool of the 193i nm AIMS™ platform will be available to SEMATECH and its member companies by Q4 2005. “During the SEMATECH-sponsored Litho Forum held in January, it became very clear that 193 nm immersion has emerged as the most likely lithography candidate for semiconductor manufacturing at the 65 nm and 45 nm nodes,” said Giang Dao, SEMATECH’s director of Lithography. “The timely development of production-worthy photomask verification and inspection systems will be a critical factor in getting this promising new technology up and running quickly.” The 193i nm AIMS™ technology to be developed will be commercially available as early as 2006, in-line with the expected introduction of 193 nm immersion lithography into volume chip production by 2007. Dr. Dirk Stenkamp, President of Carl Zeiss SMTīs Semiconductor Metrology Systems Division, stated: “The agreement with SEMATECH represents an important part of our company mission to enable the lithography roadmap through our leading AIMS™ technology. Currently, 193 nm immersion lithography is progressing extremely fast, and we have committed ourselves to an aggressive time schedule for the development of 193i nm AIMS™ technology in order to support this strong industry momentum for immersion lithography.” Recently, CZ SMT celebrated the 10th anniversary of its proprietary AIMS™ technology for advanced photomask inspection and review. AIMS™ systems are used to emulate lithography wafer exposure systems and enable fast and reliable assessments of photomask defect printability, mask CD, and success verification of photomask defect repairs. Dr. Oliver Kienzle, Managing Director of Carl Zeiss SMTīs Semiconductor Metrology Systems Division, explains: “Our unique AIMS™ technology eliminates the need to perform time- and money-consuming test wafer exposures during photomask analysis and verification. Any type of photomask, including binary masks, OPC masks as well as advanced phase-shift masks, can be reliably assessed by our systems. By complementing our current AIMS™ portfolio for 248 nm, 193 nm and 157 nm actinic wavelength inspection with a 193i nm AIMS™ platform, we will substantially extend our customersī ability to account for critical polarization effects emerging in hyper-NA immersion lithography.”  Caption: Betsy Weitzman, Chief Operating Officer-Advanced Technology (International SEMATECH), Dr. Dirk Stenkamp (right) and Dr. Oliver Kienzle (left – both Carl Zeiss SMT) sign the cooperation agreement. Markus Wiederspahn Service-Center, Press Office Phone: +49 7364 20-2194 Fax: +49 7364 20-4485 E-Mail: wiederspahn@zeiss.de Dan McGowan International SEMATECH + 01 512-356-3440 dan.mcgowan@sematech.org Number: 065/04 SE Number of Words: 496 Number of Signs: 3677 |
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