Cost of ownership for advanced optical lithography

An IC wafer fab model has been developed to predict the cost per good device produced by a wafer stepper that will allow comparisons to be made between various IC devices and various wafer lithography equipment capabilities. The model provides the versatility and flexibility to be tailored to any particular IC production environment, and to any particular optical wafer stepper capability. It is noted that the technical advances made in the areas of i-line and deep-UV reduction stepper lithography have led to a truly production-worthy lithography process. These advances have responded to some of the key challenges for optical microlithography, and have increased the productivity and utilization of the steppers. Advances in the area of reduction optics, i-line illumination, excimer lasers, alignment and in-situ metrology have all had a significant impact on the technical performance of the stepper, as well as its productivity and utilization