现代光刻技术

Modern lithography techniques

作为当前集成电路制造的主流技术,光学光刻在趋近其分辨力极限的同时,面临着越来越大的挑战,即便在波前工程和分辨力增强技术的帮助下,光学光刻的分辨力也难以满足快速发展的半导体产业的技术需求。接近式 X 射线光刻技术(XRL)、散射角限制电子束投影光刻技术(SCALPEL)、电子束直写光刻技术(EBDW)、极紫外线即软 X 射线投影光刻技术(EUVL)、离子投影光刻技术(IPL)等下一代光刻技术(NGL)将会在特征线宽为 100—70 nm 的技术节点介入集成电路制造的主流技术中。从目前 NGL 技术发展的趋势和市场需求的多元化来看,竞争的结果很可能是各种 NGL 技术并存。当特征尺寸进入纳米尺度(≤100 nm)以后,最终只有那些原子级的成像技术才能成为胜者。

This paper reports the development trends of modern lithography techniques. As a mainstream technique for VLSI fabricator, the optical lithography is advancing towards its resolution limitation, meantime, it faces the technical challenge from VLSI fabricating industry more and more. Today, the resolution of optical lithography is not enough to satisfy the fast development requirements of semiconductor industry even if the complex RET (Revolution enhancement techniques) are used in the optical lithography. Hence the NGL (Next generation lithography) techniques, such as XRL (X-ray lithography), SCALPEL (Scanning anger limited project electronic beam lithography), EBDW (Electronic beam direction writing), EUVL (Extreme ultraviolet lithography), and IPL (Ion beam project lithography) will be introduced into VLSI fabricator application for 100—70 nm line-width. Based on the NGL technique development trends and in view of the multiplicity of market inquiry, we think every NGL technique will have its survival space. However, when the characteristic width of lithography advanced into nano-meter scale (≤100 nm), only the lithography imaging at atomic level will be the last winner.