USHIO Group's EUV light source achieves output of 30W at intermediate focus

2011 International Symposia on Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography and Lithography Extensions, TOKYO, JAPAN: USHIO Inc. announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, XTREME technologies GmbH, has achieved the output of 30W at an intermediate focus under a duty cycle of 100 percent, which is indispensable for the high-volume manufacturing in EUV lithography.

The company reported this achievement during a presentation in an international conference for EUV lithography — the 2011 International Symposia on Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography and Lithography Extensions — held in Miami, Florida (USA), on October 17–21, 2011.

An EUV light source with an extremely short wavelength of 13.5 nm is said to be the last light source for the semiconductor lithography process; it is necessary for the manufacturing of semiconductor devices on and after the 22-nm generation. USHIO has been developing EUV light sources of the Laser-assisted Discharge Plasma (LDP) method, which generates an EUV from a discharged plasma, since the 1990s. USHIO acquired full ownership of XTREME technologies in 2008, and purchased the assets of Phillips Extreme UV in 2010, to aggressively promote the research and development of EUV light sources.

XTREME technologies had already achieved an output of 15 W at an intermediate focus point under a duty cycle of 100% in February 2011. The stable output of 30W was achieved by solving the problems caused by increasing the output, such as debris and thermal processing. The company already has the solutions for these problems to enable a further increase in the output. Therefore, we will continue to develop the light source with higher output.

"We have already confirmed an output equivalent to 100 W at an intermediate focus with a prototype light source. We have reached the stage of achieving an output of 30 W at an intermediate focus with continuous emission," said Masaki Yoshioka, executive VP and CTO of XTREME technologies. "We have steadily progressed in the development of the EUV source to achieve further, higher outputs of 100W and 250W while solving critical engineering problems one by one."

USHIO is accelerating development of the LDP EUV source for high-volume production in EUV lithography through XTREME technologies.