EU forms group to push for maskless litho at 32nm

The European Union has formed a program to push for the insertion of maskless lithography for IC manufacturing at the 32nm "half-pitch" node in 2009. The program is called Magic—for Maskless Lithography for IC manufacturing.

The group consists of two developers of maskless lithography tools: Mapper Lithography BV of the Netherlands and IMS Nanofabrication AG of Austria. Magic also consists of STMicroelectronics, CEA-Leti, Synopsys, Qimonda, KLA-Tencor, Fraunhofer and others.

The group, which was formed in January 2008, is part of the EU's seventh framework program. The goals for the group are to develop maskless tools for the 32nm node and to enable the supporting infrastructure.

In the program, Mapper and IMS will separately build their respective tools, which have been in development for several years. Mapper and IMS are presenting papers at the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference. Another paper is being presented by Magic.

Maskless lithography holds great promise for the production of semiconductor devices at 32nm and below, but vendors are still struggling to get it out of the lab. A growing number of companies are developing next-generation maskless tools. Advantest, E-Beam, IMS, Mapper Lithography and Multibeam are among those marshaling multiple beams to write a pattern directly on a wafer.

- Mark LaPedus
EE Times