News Article
MAPPER Lithography receives millions in subsidy from EU
The company has received a subsidy of approximately € 3.5 million from the European Union to enable the further development of its innovative lithography machine for producing next generation chips.
The company recently achieved an important breakthrough in the field of lithography by demonstrating that the wafers that are crucial for the production of chips can also be imaged using parallel electron beams. This eliminates the need to use expensive masks, which substantially reduces the manufacturing costs of chips and shortens the time to market.
The EU subsidy is being granted within the framework of the new European programme called MAGIC, which stands for Maskless lithography for IC manufacturing. This was announced at the SPIE Advanced Lithography congress being held in San Jose, California. The total budget for the MAGIC project is approximately € 12 million. In addition to MAPPER, other large European IC manufacturers including ST Microelectronics and Qimonda are also participating in the project.
The prototype of the MAPPER lithography machine is able to write the patterns for the 32 nm chip generation in the resist using parallel electron beams. The machine is based on two technological breakthroughs: the use of light to direct the electron beams individually and the use of MEMS lens arrays to focus the parallel electron beams accurately. During the next phase of this machine’s development, MAPPER will focus on applying the technology on a wafer that is 300 mm in diameter. In order to accomplish this, the team will be expanded to include approximately 60 staff members in 2008.
The EU subsidy is being granted within the framework of the new European programme called MAGIC, which stands for Maskless lithography for IC manufacturing. This was announced at the SPIE Advanced Lithography congress being held in San Jose, California. The total budget for the MAGIC project is approximately € 12 million. In addition to MAPPER, other large European IC manufacturers including ST Microelectronics and Qimonda are also participating in the project.
The prototype of the MAPPER lithography machine is able to write the patterns for the 32 nm chip generation in the resist using parallel electron beams. The machine is based on two technological breakthroughs: the use of light to direct the electron beams individually and the use of MEMS lens arrays to focus the parallel electron beams accurately. During the next phase of this machine’s development, MAPPER will focus on applying the technology on a wafer that is 300 mm in diameter. In order to accomplish this, the team will be expanded to include approximately 60 staff members in 2008.