Carl Zeiss to supply immersion litho assessment system to Sematech
A first alpha tool of the 193i nm AIMS platform is to be made available to Sematech and its member companies by Q4 2005. Commercial availability is due as early as 2006, in-line with the expected introduction of 193nm immersion lithography into volume chip production by 2007.
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 critical dimensions (CD) and success verification of photomask defect repairs. This eliminates the need to perform time- and money-consuming test wafer exposures during photomask analysis and verification.
