Product Briefing Outline: Applied Materials has
introduced the Applied ‘Tetra’ Reticle Clean, which it claims is the
industry’s only wet clean system that delivers damage-free, >99%
particle removal efficiency for 32nm-and-beyond photomasks. The Tetra
Reticle Clean system is said to set a new standard for productivity,
offering up to four times the throughput of any competing system.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Product Briefing Outline: Timbre Technologies Inc., a
Tokyo Electron-owned company, has announced the introduction of their
next generation Profiler Application Server, PAS-T4, used to process
optical measurements.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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