This achievement represents a major step towards the mass production of LPP light sources for EUV lithography systems, albeit at a lower power output than required for high volume production, which is said to be above 200W.
Gigaphoton is planning to start operation of a high-output pilot unit by the end of 2015, and say it remains committed to furthering its R&D efforts with goals of achieving continuous operation at 250W output levels, which is considered as a requirement for manufacturing applications such as memory devices.
“This result demonstrates that we are very close to realising high power, low cost, and stable LPP light sources required by our customers,” said Hitoshi Tomaru, president and CEO of Gigaphoton. “I believe that Gigaphoton’s expertise and efforts to develop the LPP light source will accelerate the development of EUV scanners for HVM. This achievement will also further encourage the industry to employ EUV scanners for their next-generation lithography processes.”
