Consortium aims to develop crucial EUV metrology tools

Sematech, the international consortium of leading semiconductor manufacturers, has launched the association at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering's NanoTech Complex, to address the needs of advanced masks for extreme ultraviolet lithography. Previously, says Sematech, this was an industry need considered too costly for individual companies to develop independently. The new EUVL Mask Infrastructure (EMI) Partnership has drawn interest from six semiconductor industry entities, while additional members are being sought for the consortium, which aims to pursue a metrology program to enable defect free EUVL masks for high volume manufacturing by 2013. John Warlaumont, Sematech's vice president of Advanced Technology, said: "EUV mask defectivity is the single greatest challenge to EUV readiness, but finding the defects requires metrology tools that do not yet exist. These tools will not be available in time without intervention, and the industry agrees that Sematech is the place to come together and partner for solutions." The EMI Partnership is open to chip manufacturers and, according to Richard Brilla (pictured), CNSE vice president for strategy, alliances and consortia, the development of advanced metrology solutions is 'critical' to accelerating the use of EUV lithography for the manufacturing of nanoelectronics devices. Brilla said: "Once again, the partnership between Sematech and the UAlbany NanoCollege is leveraging the CNSE infrastructure and driving innovative research that will support the needs of our corporate partners and the nanoelectronics industry." He added that optical lithography is unlikely to be able to pattern chips beyond the 22nm technology generation, and EUVL, with a wavelength of only 13.5nm, is widely considered the best replacement for optical lithography. The EUV masks used for sub 22nm patterning must be virtually free of defects to avoid transferring them onto chip circuits – but current metrology tools are generally ineffective at finding defects below 32nm. The EMI Partnership plans to address this metrology gap in phases by funding development of three metrology tools. First efforts will focus on enabling an enhanced EUV mask blank inspection capability by 2011, followed by development of an aerial imaging metrology system for EUV in 2013 and finally an EUV mask pattern inspection tool able to work at 16nm by 2015. Producing prototypes of these tools is expected to cost around $200million.