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EMIR GURER, TOM ZHONG, JOHN LEWELLEN, MURTHY KRISHNA & EDDIE LEE,
Silicon Valley Group, Track Systems, San Jose, CA, USA

ABSTRACT

The demand for smaller and faster semiconductor devices to accommodate high density information transfer has dramatically accelerated the development of photolithography, the key device shrinkage enabling technology, and the shift from one generation to the next. Due to the shortened lifetime of each generation of semiconductor devices and the large amount of capital investment required to develop each generation of semiconductor equipment, there is an enormous economic incentive for the semiconductor industry to extend the current 248nm lithography technology towards 0.13μm geometries and below. This requires development of a wide array of advanced process technologies which enable large substrate processing, critical dimension (CD) control, resolution enhancement, yield improvement and improved on-wafer results. SVG Track Division has been very active in developing photoresist processing tool-based, patented process technologies which are summarised in this paper.