News Article
MAPPER announce lithography breakthrough
MAPPER Lithography has reached an important milestone in the development of its highly innovative lithography machine for advanced chip manufacturing.
MAPPER Lithography has reached an important milestone in the development of its highly innovative lithography machine for advanced chip manufacturing. The company is the first to demonstrate massively parallel electron beam writing. By eliminating the use of the costly mask, MAPPER's work suggests a major breakthrough in lithography and indicates a reduction in manufacturing costs and time-to-market.
The company showed 45 nanometer dense patterns (32 nm node) in resist with multiple parallel electron beams with its demonstrator machine. MAPPER's machine is based on two technological breakthroughs: the use of light to switch the electron beams individually and the use of MEMS lens arrays to focus the parallel electron beams accurately.
Dr. Burn Lin, senior director of TSMC's lithography division in Taiwan says: ‘This achievement is a significant breakthrough. This proves the multi-beam resolution capability of MAPPER's low voltage approach. We will continue to explore the viability of using MAPPER's technology for our advanced manufacturing processes. 'Boudewijn Baud, MAPPER's CEO, adds: ‘Our whole team has been working hard to achieve this milestone. From now on we can focus on transferring the technology to a 300 mm platform. For that purpose we will significantly expand the team.'
MAPPER develops lithography machines for the chip industry. These machines utilize a new and innovative technology with which the chips of the future can be made cost effectively. MAPPER´s machine provides a highly cost-effective way of making the next generation of chips because it makes the mask redundant and combines high resolution and high productivity. Current lithography machines use photographic techniques to create minute electrical circuits smaller than 1/100th of a human hair on a silicon wafer. They use a mask which contains the blueprint of the chip and transfer this pattern on to a photosensitive layer (comparable to a photograph being exposed on film).
The company showed 45 nanometer dense patterns (32 nm node) in resist with multiple parallel electron beams with its demonstrator machine. MAPPER's machine is based on two technological breakthroughs: the use of light to switch the electron beams individually and the use of MEMS lens arrays to focus the parallel electron beams accurately.
Dr. Burn Lin, senior director of TSMC's lithography division in Taiwan says: ‘This achievement is a significant breakthrough. This proves the multi-beam resolution capability of MAPPER's low voltage approach. We will continue to explore the viability of using MAPPER's technology for our advanced manufacturing processes. 'Boudewijn Baud, MAPPER's CEO, adds: ‘Our whole team has been working hard to achieve this milestone. From now on we can focus on transferring the technology to a 300 mm platform. For that purpose we will significantly expand the team.'
MAPPER develops lithography machines for the chip industry. These machines utilize a new and innovative technology with which the chips of the future can be made cost effectively. MAPPER´s machine provides a highly cost-effective way of making the next generation of chips because it makes the mask redundant and combines high resolution and high productivity. Current lithography machines use photographic techniques to create minute electrical circuits smaller than 1/100th of a human hair on a silicon wafer. They use a mask which contains the blueprint of the chip and transfer this pattern on to a photosensitive layer (comparable to a photograph being exposed on film).
