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Lithography track specialist, SOKUDO has joined the new industry and research multi-partner program IMAGINE run by CEA-Leti that is developing maskless lithography for IC manufacturing. Under a three-year project partners such as TSMC and STMicroelectronics are working to potentially bring maskless lithography developed by MAPPER Lithography into the mainstream.

“E-beam has the potential to be a viable technology for many sub-22nm lithography process layers in logic/foundry semiconductor manufacturing,” noted Tadahiro Suhara, SOKUDO president and CEO. “SOKUDO is taking a comprehensive approach to being prepared for coat/develop track process readiness in multiple sub-22nm lithography technologies, including immersion ArF lithography extensions, EUV and e-beam lithography. The CEA-Leti IMAGINE collaboration brings together a focused effort to enable production-worthy e-beam lithography, including multiple resist manufacturers key to sub-22nm process development.”

“We have been working with SOKUDO’s RF3 coat-and-develop track system for many years and the IMAGINE program will benefit from the strong knowledge and support of SOKUDO in developing the necessary processes to support maskless technology,” said Serge Tedesco, CEA-Leti program manager. “The experience of CEA-Leti in e-beam technology combined with SOKUDO’s coat-and-develop track expertise will help secure the necessary process infrastructure for multi e-beam lithography.”

Concerns remain that both immersion with double printing and EUV lithography will be too expensive for many types of IC device requiring fabrication below the 22nm node and therefore e-beam technology could supplement lithography requirements in the future.