At a media briefing in Veldhoven, The Netherlands, ASML recently unveiled new developments in its Twinscan lithography platform. Twinscan is a dual-stage lithography system that allows exposure of one wafer while simultaneously measuring another wafer. The new Twinscan NXT platform now features a planar wafer stage design said to offer significant improvements in overlay and productivity, necessary for the emerging double-patterning (DPT) techniques that manufacturers need to shrink the smallest chip features by up to 42%. Double patterning addresses the challenge of printing ever-smaller chip features by splitting some of these exposures into two parts-printing half of the pattern at once is much easier than printing the entire layer. The tradeoff is that for the circuitry to work properly, the two interlocking halves of the pattern, with literally millions of intersections, must be aligned with a precision that is nearly unimaginable- as little as 2 nm, a distance equivalent to about eight silicon atoms.
展开▼
