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Product Briefing Outline: KLA-Tencor has announced XP, a new upgrade package for 28xx broadband brightfield inspection systems. The XP package is the first commercially available product to give an inspection system access to standard IC design layout files. With access to this information, the inspection system can use knowledge of the defect’s location within the circuit to better estimate its probability of affecting device yield. In addition, XP can use the results of the design-aware wafer inspection to identify features on the mask that may be particularly sensitive to process variations during printing. These and other features of the XP upgrade package are designed to improve the sensitivity and productivity of existing 28xx inspectors and raise the information content of defect results, helping to accelerate identification and resolution of defect issues. Read more >>

Product Briefing Outline: Sokudo Co., Ltd. has recently launched the SOKUDO DUO platform, a new concept in photoresist coat/develop track systems that provides customers with the ultra-high productivity needed to optimize leading-edge lithography processing. Incorporating an innovative dual track design, the system simultaneously processes wafers in two lines, claimed to boost throughput to 250-300 wafers per hour (wph), depending on system configuration, while also improving uptime and substantially reducing system footprint. Read more >>

Product Briefing Outline: KLA-Tencor and Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL) have introduced the ‘AcuShape,’ a new modeling and library-generation package to meet optical critical dimension metrology requirements for the 32nm node and below. The new software package enables metrology engineers in IC fabs to measure the dimensions of 3D logic and memory structures, such as FinFETs, bulb RCATs, and structures created by the advanced patterning technique called spacer pitch splitting. It is designed to operate on KLA-Tencor’s stand-alone optical critical dimension platform, ‘SpectraCD’, and Timbre Integrated Metrology (IM) CD systems. AcuShape has been shipped to several memory, logic and foundry fabs in the United States, Europe, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, where it is being used to measure production wafers and provide early learning on advanced R&D structures. Read more >>