EUV lithography research program at ASET

EUV lithography is the most promising candidate for delineating patterns below 70 nm. Last year, the Japanese government provided a supplemental budget to the research program on EUV Lithography. The overall Japanese plan for the development of EUV lithography has 3 phases. The first is the ASET program, which concerns the development of basic technologies for EUV lithography. The second phase is the development of an EUV Lithography system. And the final one is the development of technologies that will make EUV Lithography practical. Current plans call for each phase to take 3 years, for a total of 9 years for the whole program. Ten semiconductor manufacturers and two equipment suppliers participate in the first-phase ASET EUV program described in this paper In this program, the basic technologies of EUV lithography will be developed, which include multilayer mirror mash technology, resist materials and process technology for top surface imaging, and metrology for aspherical optics. This program will be carried out at the Atsugi research center and two branch laboratories at Himeji and Sagamihara.