Progress and challenges in electron beam lithography

181

MicroelectronicEngineering 9(1989) 181 North-Holland

PROGRESS

H.C.

AND CHALLENGES

IN ELECTRON

BEAM LITHOGRAPHY

PFEIFFER

IBM - General Technology Division East Fishkill, New York 12533, U.S.A.

The lithography trend in the semiconductor industry places demands for steady improvements of exposure tools in resolution, line width control and overlay. Electron beam exposure systems proved remarkably adaptable IBM's high throughput EL tools in meeting the demands of that trend. which have been introduced in the mid 1970's to fabricate ASIC type semiconductor devices with 2.5 pm critical dimensions have been extended to submicron applications. The most recent enhancements have extended the operation to 2.5 pm covering an order of magnitude of lithographic capability without major tool changes. The key technical challenge is to maintain an acceptable throughput while steadily increasing pixel resolution, pixel count and pattern data volume. New electron optical will be presented.

features

of EL3 together

with

0167-9317/89/$3.50 0 1989,ElsevierSciencePublishersB.V.(North-Holland)

latest

exposure

results