According to a French technology research institute, is the lithography machine by the Delft company Mapper Lithography was developed suitable for transistors 14 and 10 nanometers. The machine operates with electron beams.
The so-called electron beam or abbreviated as e-beam lithography technique, in term, the current lithographic techniques using ultraviolet light work to follow. As the to produce features of transistors will be smaller, steps chip manufacturers and producers of the required equipment on light with a shorter wavelength. For the production of the current generation of processors to 22nm is ultravioletlicht still enough, but for future generations have smaller wavelengths can be used.
One of the candidates in addition to ‘double patterning’, computational lithography and euv-lithography, electron beam lithography. This technique does not use light, but beams of electrons to the mask for the production of chips to draw. The Dutch company Mapper Lithography has designed a prototype of a multibeam-lithography machine that transistors with featuresizes of less than 22nm should be able to produce.
The prototype was tested by the French institute of technology CEA-Leti, that Mapper Lithography works. CEA-Leti managed to test patterns of 22nm to produce, but also, 14nm and even 10nm-size might with the technique as possible. The elektronenbundeltechniek makes use of several electron beams to the etching structures, without the use of a mask, on a wafer.
Both companies have under the name of Imagine an r&d agreement with a duration of three years signed. In that period must be an improved testing machine of Mapper at CEA-Leti to be installed. In the course of 2012, the system has one wafer per hour to be able to deliver, what scale-up could be up to ten wafers per hour. Among others, TSMC and STMicroelectronics are also participating in the Imagine program.