An Integrated Approach to the Analysis of Imprint vs. Optical Lithography, or why this is not just a mask discussion

摘要

Imprint lithography has been proposed as a low cost method for next generation lithography for the manufacturing of semiconductors for the 45nm node and below, as costs for traditional optical lithography, and EUV lithography escalate to new levels that may prohibit new semiconductor devices from ever coming to market. While this was the widely proposed use of this technology, a whole host of new areas can take advantage of this lower cost manufacturing technology also. The template enables imprinting all these devices. Template manufacturing and development is currently done along side of state of the art reticle manufacturing. While the dimensions of the 1X templates is significantly smaller than what is needed for optical lithography templates, the dimensions are on the same order as the optical assist features, scatter bars and serifs used today. We will show current capability of 1X templates for imprint applications that are available commercially today, for semiconductor and nanofabrication applications. The advantages on the wafer side for the adoption of imprint lithography is the simplification of processing, reduced capital costs and process control when integrated in the wafer fab. The adoption of imprint reduces the barrier of entry to state of the art resolution for many older existing fabs that cannot spend upwards of 30 million dollars on an immersion I-line cluster. In this paper we will explore not only the technical aspects of imprint lithography, but also the economic impact as well.