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Optical lithography

Lithography at EUV wavelengths

Nature Photonics volume 4, pages 809–811 (2010)Cite this article

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Extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography at 13.5 nm is expected to be introduced in high-volume semiconductor chip production over the next three years. Research is now underway to investigate sub-10-nm light sources that could support lithography over the coming decades.

Gordon Moore, co-founder of the semiconductor chip manufacturer Intel, predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit chip would double every two years1. The semiconductor industry has maintained this rate of transistor dimension scaling, now known as Moore's law, for 45 years. Integrated circuits are patterned by exposing light-sensitive photoresist materials deposited on silicon wafers and then removing the exposed (or sometimes unexposed) areas using low-pressure plasma discharges. The required pattern of transistors and other electronic features is thereby etched into the silicon, after which the remaining photoresist is removed. This process is known as lithography, from the Greek 'lithos' meaning stone, and 'grapho' meaning to write; literally 'to write on stone' where the 'stone' is a large, flat silicon crystal.

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Figure 1: Over the past twenty years, the field of lithography has seen a dramatic reduction in both the half-pitch feature size and the wavelengths used, but at very different rates.

References

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  1. Erik Wagenaars and Geoff Pert are in the Department of Physics at the University of York, Greg Tallents, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK. greg.tallents@york.ac.uk,

    Greg Tallents, Erik Wagenaars & Geoff Pert

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  1. Greg Tallents
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  2. Erik Wagenaars
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  3. Geoff Pert
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Tallents, G., Wagenaars, E. & Pert, G. Lithography at EUV wavelengths. Nature Photon 4, 809–811 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2010.277

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