Intel Foundry has received and assembled the industry’s first High Numerical Aperture (High NA) Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography system, a next-generation lithography system developed by ASML.
The ASML TWINSCAN EXE:5000 High NA EUV tool was installed at the Intel R&D site in Hillsboro, Oregon. It is currently undergoing callibration testing in preparation for production of Intel’s future process roadmap.
Intel says the new tool provides the ability to dramatically improve resolution and feature scaling for the next generation of processors, enabling Intel Foundry to continue process leadership beyond Intel 18A.
ASML recently announced it has printed the first-ever 10 nanometer (nm) dense lines in the High NA lab at the company’s headquarters in Veldhoven, Netherlands. These are the finest lines ever printed, setting a world-record resolution for an EUV lithography scanner. This demonstration validates the innovative High NA EUV optics design from ASML partner Zeiss.
The TWINSCAN EXE:5000 system was transported to Oregon in more than 250 crates inside 43 freight containers. These were loaded onto multiple cargo planes that landed in Seattle. They were then transferred to 20 trucks for the drive to Oregon. The total weight of each new system is more than 150 metric tons.
More About High NA EUV: High NA EUV lithography is an evolutionary step beyond EUV lithography, which uses a wavelength of light (13.5nm) that does not naturally occur on Earth. The light is created by a powerful laser hitting a droplet of tin heated to a temperature of almost 220,000 degrees Celsius — almost 40 times hotter than the average surface temperature of the sun. This light reflects off a mask containing a template of the desired circuit pattern, and then through an optical system built with the most accurate mirrors ever fabricated.
Numerical Aperture (NA) is a measure of the ability to collect and focus light. By changing the design of the optics used to project a pattern onto a wafer, High NA EUV technology enables a significant step forward in resolution and transistor size. The ability to create transistors at these smaller dimensions also requires new transistor structures and improvements in other process steps that Intel is developing in parallel to the integration of the first High NA EUV system.
