Product Briefing Outline: Mattson Technology has added the ‘Alpine’ system to its family of dry strip products. The Alpine system was developed to address advanced low temperature photoresist strip processes on back-end-of-line (BEOL) and front-end-of-line (FEOL) applications for future technology nodes with a single tool. Specifically, the tool is designed to tackle the challenges of advanced low-k and other complex materials. The company noted that it has shipped its initial Alpine system to a major semiconductor manufacturer in Taiwan. 

Product Briefing Outline: Applied Materials has introduced the ‘Applied Aera2’ Mask Inspection system that is designed to handle leading-edge photomask inspection and qualification tasks at the 45nm node and below, including double patterning. The Aera2 uses sophisticated aerial imaging technology to immediately see how the pattern on the mask will appear on the wafer. The system detects defects according to their impact on the wafer, filtering out the large number of non-printing defects that plague conventional mask inspection systems. Applied Materials claims that the Aera2 system addresses all mask shop inspection applications and provides more than twice the throughput of any competing system. 

Product Briefing Outline: KLA-Tencor has launched its latest mask inspection technology that provides both the versatility in a single system to find all defects on a mask and the facility to show the defects that will print on the wafer. The ‘Wafer Plane Inspection’ (WPI) system is designed to overcome yield-critical 32nm mask defect challenges while operating up to 40 percent faster than previous inspection systems, potentially reducing the percentage of total mask manufacturing time devoted to inspection. WPI technology is undergoing advanced beta testing in conjunction with leading chipmakers in the U.S. and Taiwan. WPI-equipped systems have been shipped to multiple customers. 

Product Briefing Outline: Numetrics Management Systems has launched ‘NMX-ERP’ 3.0, its next-generation suite of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for integrated circuit (IC) development organizations. The new software significantly extends the company’s top-down project planning and risk measurement capabilities, handling chips designed in nodes down to 45nm. 

Product Briefing Outline: Toppan Photomasks has introduced a new DFM tool that will shorten cycle time and reduce risk in chip design through an exception dispositioning process for identifying and analyzing defects and design errors. The tool was developed in collaboration with Anchor Semiconductor, Inc. and is an extension of that company’s ‘NanoScope’ DFM platform. It allows designers and tapeout engineers to review “exceptions” found during the processing of customer data and masks. 

Product Briefing Outline: A unique Roller Pinion System (RPS) from Nexen Group, Inc., allows machine designers to incorporate highly accurate linear and rotary motion-control functions with zero backlash and speeds as high as 11 meters per second (36.1 feet per second).  The patented RPS technology can replace typical rack and pinions, linear motors, spur gears, chain/belt drives and ball-screws in critical motion-control applications that require high speed, great accuracy, and low maintenance and noise. 

Product Briefing Outline: Carl Zeiss SMT has announced the completion of their final design - ‘PROVE’ - for the next generation Photomask Registration and Overlay Metrology system, which was developed in collaboration with SEMATECH. PROVE will allow for the production of more advanced photomasks with substantially improved image placement accuracy, according to the company. 

Product Briefing Outline: Molecular Imprints, Inc. (MII) has introduced the ‘Imprio’ 300, which incorporates improvements in automation, tool throughput and overlay performance. The company claims that the Imprio 300 represents the industry's highest resolution and lowest cost-of-ownership (CoO) patterning solution for IC prototyping and process development at the 32nm node and beyond. 

Product Briefing Outline: Agilent Technologies has announced the availability of deep-UV optical coating, offering long-lifetime optics that address the growing need for highly accurate and reliable beam delivery in leading-edge semiconductor photolithography systems. 

Product Briefing Outline: Pixer Technology has launched ‘Galileo,’ which it claims to be the industry’s first high speed, high resolution DUV metrology tool that enables measurement of DUV transmission with a 0.1 percent resolution limit and is sensitive to transmission changes of 0.01 percent. The tool is for use on advanced mask blanks at the 45nm node and below. 

Product Briefing Outline: KLA-Tencor has launched a new family of reticle inspection systems that takes into consideration the different needs of logic and memory fabs, as well as different mask generations. These include the ‘TeraFab SLQ-2X,’ which is designed for leading-edge logic fabs. The ‘TeraFab Q-3X’ is designed for multiple-die re-qualification and incoming quality control (IQC) applications common to memory fabs, and the ‘TeraFab SLQ-1X,’ which offers a lowest cost of ownership (CoO) alternative, is suited to go/no-go functions for single-die inspection typical of logic fab requalification applications. TeraFab systems are currently undergoing beta testing and evaluation at leading 45nm-generation logic and memory fabs, in Japan, Taiwan and Europe. 

Product Briefing Outline: Axcelis Technologies has launched the Optima XE high-energy ion implanter, the final component of Axcelis’ Optima single wafer suite of tools, which provides a complete range of energy levels from 10keV to 4MeV. In particular, the Optima XE is designed to provide a broad energy range to perform all isolation and retrograde well implants for advanced devices. With its new single wafer endstation, it can also perform medium current implants. 

Product Briefing Outline: Nanometrics has released its NanoCD Suite, which is composed of four key optical critical dimension (OCD) metrology solutions: NanoGen; NanoMatch; NanoStation and NanoDiffract. When NanoCD Suite is combined with its Atlas standalone and 9010 integrated metrology systems, it provides a complete OCD solution that can measure and model all 45nm and smaller devices, including scribe line process control targets and advanced die structures, as well as advanced R&D structures for 32nm and 22nm nodes, providing the necessary metrology for critical process control. 

Product Briefing Outline: Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials’ CMPTechnologies division has introduced the ‘VisionPad’ 5000 CMP pad, specifically designed for defectivity reduction in shallow trench isolation (STI) and interlayer dielectric (ILD) applications. The new pad targets volume manufacturing of memory and logic chips at 65nm and below. 

Product Briefing Outline: Entegris has introduced the new Torrento family of high-flow liquid filters that help improve liquid contamination control of nano-scale particles in wet etch and clean (WEC) manufacturing processes used in advanced semiconductor applications. Built on a combination of new membrane technology and an advanced ATE device construction, the Torrento filters provide high-yield, rapid bath clean-up cycles, extended filter life, and allow for fast change-outs and increase cleanliness. 

Product Briefing Outline: Aerotech’s WaferMax T rotary stage was originally designed for the demands of precision wafer inspection; however, due to its low height design it can be used in a wider range of tool applications where high-throughput production performance with high levels of precision are required especially when space and access are limited. The WaferMax-T rotary stage has full 360-degree rotation and a certified accuracy of +/-5arc/sec. 

Product Briefing Outline: Aquest Systems has introduced its new ‘FabEX’ No-Wait-Productivity (SM) Improvement (NPI) solution that is designed optimize material movement in an existing fab by eliminating bottlenecks and congestions that impact IC manufacturers' fab productivity.  The solution is claimed to connect without any changes to the IC manufacturers' existing automated material handling systems (AMHS). Aquest has integrated the FabEX 'highway' into Powerchip Semiconductor's current AMHS, which is designed to provide additional capacity to move 8,000 FOUPS per day at high speeds between their two fabs, 12A and 12B, with average delivery times of less than 140 seconds, the company said. 

Product Briefing Outline: KLA-Tencor and Nikon Corporation have collaborated to develop a set of fully automated overlay correction control system tools called Scanner Match Maker (SMM). Chipmakers can use the tool set to correct overlay errors common to “mix and match” lithography strategies that use lithography tools of varying capabilities and from different suppliers. The SMM technology is aimed at elevating performance of all scanners, enabling chipmakers to reduce their dedication of leading-edge scanners to specific layers, thus cutting overall lithography tool costs at more advanced nodes and extending the lifetime of lithography tools.