I love to see young people at conferences like this\none. They tend to be enthusiastic (not\nyet jaded), with a look on their faces that only comes from drinking\ninformation from a firehouse. I still\nremember what that was like, wondering what a word like \u201cpellicle\u201d meant, or\nwhat some undefined acronym in a slide could possibly represent (EL? DOF?). There was so much to learn, and I wanted to\nlearn it all. This week I have had the\nadded privilege of bringing a brand new Fractilia employee, Jonathan, to his\nfirst conference and his first introduction to the lithography community. These two conferences are a great place to\nstart (587 people in attendance), as opposed to the SPIE Advanced Lithography\nSymposium (with closer to 2,000 people, twice as many parallel sessions, and\nten times as many hospitality suites). \nIt looks like the lithography life will suit him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Wednesday there were more talks about a new absorber\nmaterial to reduce the thickness, and the 3D mask effects, of features on an\nEUV mask. The problem is, we could use\nthat new mask now, but we are a long way from picking the new material(s). As many people have noted, new material\ndevelopment typically takes at least 10 years, and often 20, before it is ready\nfor manufacturing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Weimin Gao of ASML gave a talk about extending 0.33 NA EUV\nsingle exposure patterning to the 3-nm node. \nWhile a decent talk, he delivered the typical ASML message: it is someone else\u2019s fault. To get to the 3-nm node specs for EPE (edge\nplacement error), we need better masks, better resists, and better etch. What was not mentioned was the need for a\nbetter scanner. More dose, anyone?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rik Jonckheere of imec gave a paper that I\u2019m sure will\nbecome a standard reference point from now on. \nHe showed that small mask defects, too small to print, can increase the\nprobability of a stochastic printing error (bridge or break). He showed that mask defects of a variety of\ntypes and sizes produced a universal curve where the increased probability of a\nstochastic printing defect was controlled by the percent CD error caused by the\nmask defect. It looks as if mask defects\nare an important contributor to stochastic defects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We new it was coming, but still it was good to hear that\nLasertec is ready to ship their new actinic patterned mask inspection tool. This is great news, though there are still\nmany unknowns about how to use this tool for mask manufacturing, repelliclization\nor requalification, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the EUV pellicle front, Emily Gallagher showed\nimpressively high transmittance from carbon nanotube (CNT) pellicles. At least one more year of research is needed,\nthough, before an industrialization effort for CNT pellicles can begin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Photomask Technology conference ended with a panel of\nmask experts talking about the EUV mask ecosystem for beyond-first-generation\nmasks (I moderated the panel along with Harry Levenson). Here is my take on the main messages of the\npanelists:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thursday was a half-day of EUV-only talks. Chris Anderson of Berkeley gave a talk on the\nMET5 that was great (and I don\u2019t even care about the MET5). He simply told a compelling story. He also gets the \u201cmost beautiful slides\u201d\naward (and there was no one else even close in the competition). From Daniel Schmidt of IBM I learned how\nhigh-order overlay corrections, where the scanner stage takes on a curvy path\nto make these corrections, result in \u201cimage fading\u201d, a blurring of the images\nsimilar to stage vibration. For the\ncases he studied he saw something like a 2% worsening of the LWR as a result of\nthese high-order corrections. The last\nsession was full of good stochastic papers, each one incrementally adding to our\nunderstanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I prepare to leave beautiful Monterey, I\u2019m going to\nFieldwork for one last locally-made double IPA. \nTill next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I love to see young people at conferences like this one. They tend to be enthusiastic (not yet jaded), with a look on their faces that only comes from drinking information from a firehouse. I still remember what that was like, wondering what a word like \u201cpellicle\u201d meant, or what some undefined acronym in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microlithography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=602"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":605,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions\/605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}