San Jose, CA--At the SPIE Microlithography meeting yesterday, Cymer (San Diego, CA) announced a collaboration with KLA-Tencor (San Jose, CA), in which Cymer will provide details of light source spectra to be incorporated into KLA-Tencor's PROLITH lithography optimization tool. The companies expect to continue to jointly develop enhancements to this capability for future PROLITH revisions.
Through this collaboration, Cymer and KLA-Tencor intend to give users immediate access to a more accurate representation of the complete optical lithography process to help customers more rapidly optimize their lithography processes, thus reducing time-to-production and maximizing overall return on investment (ROI).
"The effect of laser bandwidth on critical dimensions (CD) becomes more significant with higher numerical apertures (NA) and shrinking process windows. As these effects become progressively greater, we see a growing need to provide a more accurate representation of the light source spectrum available to our customers," said Edward Charrier, General Manager, Process Analysis Division, KLA-Tencor.
The PROLITH advanced lithography process optimization tool provides users with insight into the effects of lithography process variables while evaluating process performance improvements. With the new enhancements, customers using PROLITH will be able to model the effects of changes in light source spectral characteristics on their advanced lithography processes, and use these results to better optimize their process to minimize the effects of the variations.
"We have been collaborating with KLA-Tencor on simulating the impact of laser bandwidth on CD for over five years and are pleased to join forces, once again, to meet a critical industry need with the development of the latest version of PROLITH," said Nigel Farrar, Cymer's vice president Lithography Applications Marketing.