EUV Lithography

EUVL holds the promise of returning to a high k1 lithography thereby reducing design and process complexity. First printed images from the EUV HVM tool generation that is being deployed in the field demonstrate the expected imaging quality; however, the industry is waiting to see if reliability data and productivity improvements of the first production tools at customer sites will meet expectations. While EUVL is still facing infrastructure and productivity challenges-mask blank defectivity and source power the most prominent among those-EUVL it is seen as the only technology that could meet the semiconductor industry´s need to significantly reduce lithography cost from the double and multiple patterning approaches that are currently required to achieve the desired feature resolution.