Mask RD Activities at the Advanced Mask Technology Center

摘要

The Advanced Mask Technology Center (AMTC) in Dresden is an equally-owned joint venture of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), DuPont Photomasks, Inc. (DPI), and Infineon Technologies AG (Infineon) founded in 2002 to create a world-leading mask R&D center for both DRAM and logic applications. The AMTC's primary focus is research and development of sub-70 nm technologies. While 193 nm lithography will be used for 65 nm design rules and is probable for 45 nm design rules, solutions for sub-45 nm design rules are still being studied. Possible solutions include 193 nm immersion, 157 nm immersion, EUV, and EPL or its variants. The AMTC is actively involved in multiple collaborative projects to develop masks for advanced lithographies. This paper presents a sampling of AMTC's development activities on both conventional and EUV masks. Intensive studies on adequate materials and their properties for the respective technology have been performed with key partners in the field. Masks have been produced and analyzed. New repair processes have been developed for the small structures of future nodes, the printing capabilities have been predicted by AIMS measurements and analyzed with printing experiments at the respective wavelengths. In this talk we will present the latest results of simulations, experiments, handling and tool qualifications performed at the AMTC or with its partners. We will especially focus on our activities for the EUV technology and will present results on material and process development as well as on simulations for soft and hard pellicle induced distortions. For the EUV technology we will present preliminary results from our etching experiment on binary masks. First results on the performance of our new nano-machining RAVE tool will be shown.