China details solid state DUV lithography system
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Researchers in China have published details of a deep UV (DUV) lithography system that could help the country develop high performance chips.
China is subject to export controls on leading edge lithography systems using extreme UV (EUV) and some DUV systems and has been working on these technologies for over a decade. Huawei is reported to be testing an EUV system later this year.
- China EUV lithography system could trial in 2025
- ASML sees export controls on latest DUV lithography equipment
The DUV system developed by the team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, operates at 193nm and uses compact solid-state nanosecond pulsed laser system with a repetition rate of 6 kHz which corresponding to a pulse energy of over 10 μJ.
One part of the 1030-nm laser from the home-made Yb:YAG crystal amplifier is divided to generate 258 nm laser (1.2 W) by fourth-harmonic generation, and the rest is used to pump an optical parametric amplifier producing 1553 nm laser (700 mW).
Frequency mixing of these beams in cascaded LiB3O5 crystals yields a 193-nm laser with 70-mW average power and a linewidth of less than 880MHz. This is key for producing the features sizes on silicon at 7nm with immersion optics, and can be used down to 3nm process nodes.
The system uses a new technique, a vortex bream, which the team say is the first at 193nm.
It introduces a spiral phase plate to the 1553-nm beam before frequency mixing to generate a vortex beam carrying orbital angular momentum. This could be used for seeding the ArF excimer lasers that are used in DUV lithography systems and so has potential applications in wafer processing and defect inspection.
www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/advanced-photonics-nexus
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