European EUV program targets 'operational' tool by early 2004

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- An R&D organization from France here today announced major plans to combine its resources with a separate group from Germany and Holland to accelerate development of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology for next-generation lithography (NGL).

The combined entity from the various European nations will pool their resources and develop an "operational" EUV tool by the end of 2003 or early 2004, according to one of the members of the new group, ASML Holding N.V. of the Netherlands.

The Dutch-based company hopes to beat its competitors to the punch in EUV technology. Two separate tools are also being developed by Japanese lithography rivals Canon Inc. and Nikon Corp., according to industry analysts.

Meanwhile, the combined France-Germany-Holland effort will not only develop extreme ultraviolet exposure systems, but also EUV-basedblank photomasks, laser sources, and metrology tools, said Jean-Charles Guibert, strategic program manager within the Micro- and Nanotechnologies Innovation Center at France's Leti laboratories.

The new entity will also merge separate EUV efforts in France with those in Holland and Germany, Guibert said, during a keynote address at the SPIE Microlithography conference in Santa Clara today.

The companies from the Holland/Germany side include ASML, Carl Zeiss, Sagem, and Xenocs, while French members consist of Leti and Sopra, according to Guibert in an interview after his presentation.

Previously, France had been working on EUV R&D under the so-called "Preuve" program. The organization, which consisted of Leti and Sopra, had been developing a range of EUV technologies, he said.

At the same time, ASML, Zeiss and others were working on similar but separate EUV technologies, he said. Now, the two separate groups "will jointly develop EUV technologies," Guibert said.

One of the first efforts between these nations is apparently called "Extatic," or the Extreme UV Alpha Tool Integration Consortium. Details about that consortium emerged last month (see Feb. 19 story ).

At the SPIE event on Tuesday, ASML is expected to present a paper on Extatic. According to the paper, ASML is developing a pre-production EUV tool for use in developing chips at the 50-nm node and beyond. The tool is expected to be operational by the end of 2003 or early 2004, according to the paper.

In the EUV tools development, ASML is responsible for the systems architecture, material handlers, staging, metrology systems, and software.

Zeiss is responsible for the design of the optical column, while Sagem will develop alternative optics and mirror mounting technology. Xeconc will work on alternative multiplayer deposition technology, according to the paper.

"ASML has pre-production development programs in place in EUV to reach the over 80 wafer-per-hour throughput requirements," according to the conference paper. "One of the first pre-production programs is called Extatic," the paper said.

ASML is also expected to become a "systems integrator" for a U.S.-led consortium that is developing a EUV tool. The Dutch company is expected to develop a commercial tool, built around the technology.

Last year, the U.S.-led consortium, called the Extreme Ultraviolet LLC (EUV LLC), announced it had developed and demonstrated the world's first exposure tool based on EUV (see Feb. 27, 2001, story).

The EUV LLC is aiming its EUV-based tool for the development of next-generation devices with features sizes of 0.07 micron and below. The consortium is made up of Advanced Micro Devices, IBM, Infineon, Intel, Micron, Motorola, and U.S. Department of Energy's national laboratories.