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Industry Overview
The IC
manufacturing industry is continuing to follow Moore’s
law to ever smaller critical dimensions and feature
sizes. The industry is producing chips with design rules
at the 45nm node today and is pushing aggressively
toward 32nm and 22nm feature sizes. For ICs at advanced
nodes, however, the complexity and cost of optical
lithography tools is extremely high, while limits in
resolution are being approached.
Multibeam believes it can make significant contributions
to the industry by enabling EBDW (E-Beam Direct Write)
through its high-throughput, high-resolution,
multi-column e-beam technology.
High Volume IC Manufacturing
Multibeam is working with a customer to address the
high-volume manufacturing market. An e-beam maskless lithography
system equipped with a Multibeam MBXÔ
Engine, can pattern "critical layers" including
contacts, vias, and gates, or can trim lines after
Self-Aligned Double Patterning (SADP)
to
pattern poly and metal layers.
A crucial requirement in
this application is very high throughput. Each column
independently vector-scans the wafer surface, writing
square and rectangular shapes with a limited range of
aspect ratios specifically designed for contacts and
vias or to trim lines at advanced process nodes.
Low Volume IC Manufacturing
The
Multibeam ASIC Writer, or MEBICÔ,
is designed for throughputs of 1-5 wafers per hour at
advanced nodes with the capability of printing every
layer of an IC directly from GDS-II or OASIS design
files. By eliminating the need for photomasks, advanced
ASICs can be quickly produced in low volumes at much
lower cost.
In addition to printing ASICs in general, the
MEBICÔ
is a cost-effective means of producing derivative IC
designs. Multiple designs can be printed to a single
wafer, speeding development and time to market.
Complex Mask Writing
To
extend optical lithography, new mask technologies, such
as Inverse Lithography Technology (ILT) and pixelated
phase-shift masks, have been developed. These
technologies result in complex masks with numerous
sub-resolution assist features (SRAFs). But the
complexity of these masks pushes writing time to extreme
lengths, resulting in increasingly high mask set costs
with each new generation.
A Multibeam Mask Writer
can write with sufficient resolution and at sufficient
speed to cost-effectively print these complex photomasks.
The more complex the mask, the more a Multibeam Mask
Writer will improve throughput, cost, and yield.
Wafer Defect Inspection
E-beam inspection tools are used in defect detection and
yield enhancement in IC development and production, but
the single-beam systems used today have inadequate
throughput for full-wafer in-line inspection. In
production, e-beam inspection tools currently sample
only a small percentage of some wafers, and statistical
methods are used to obtain defect information.
The high inspection rates enabled through Multibeam’s
technology result in shorter inspection times (for
faster process control feedback) and larger sample sizes
(to catch less frequent process defects), making
Multibeam’s MBXÔ
Engine a viable solution for in-line production
inspection.
Photomask (Reticle) Inspection
In
addition to complex mask writing, Multibeam MBXÔ
Engines can be used to inspect photomasks for defects. A
high resolution e-beam inspection system can find
defects in 22nm complex masks that optical systems miss.
Flat Panel Display (FPD)
Inspection
Multibeam has developed patent protected technology in
high throughput flat panel display inspection.
CD SEM
The
Multibeam MBXÔ
Engine can be used as a high throughput scanning
electron microscope (SEM) for critical dimension (CD)
measurements. In this application, a target of interest
is imaged with a raster scanned e-beam. CD SEM
measurements have become increasingly important as the
industry continues to move to ever smaller feature
sizes. |
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