The lithography machine is the most core production equipment in the wafer production line, and the development process has also gone through several generations.

If we take large-scale commercial application as the standard line, generally speaking, the sixties are the era of contact lithography and proximity lithography machines, and in the seventies the lithography equipment was updated to projection lithography machines, in the eighties to step-by-step lithography machines, and in the nineties to step-by-step scanning lithography machines, immersion lithography machines were popular in the early new century.

After the 21st century, thanks to the Chinese scientist Dr. Lin Benjian's idea of adding water to the photoresist, ASML, which suddenly got a big trick, drove Japanese lithography machine manufacturers from the cloud into the dust with an invasive lithography machine in one fell swoop, and monopolized 70% of the global lithography machine market in less than a few years.

Since light is essentially a wave, the shorter the wavelength of light in the microscopic physical world, the higher the accuracy, in other words, the shorter the wavelength of light, the finer the lines engraved on the wafer.

Early Moore's Law predicted that the density of integrated circuits would double every year, and it was not until 1975 that Moore's Law was changed to every eighteen months, as is known in the future.

According to Rayleigh's formula: CD=k1*(λ/NA), where CD represents the exposure size or the minimum size of lithography, such as 5.0 microns, 3.0 microns, etc., and even directly refers to the technical standards of the wafer production line, and K1 represents the comprehensive factors that interfere with the reduction of lithography size, such as photoresist, such as the power supply voltage of the workshop environment, etc.

NA stands for the numerical aperture of the lens, and the academic description of this thing is more complicated, simply put, the larger the NA value, the more light transmitted, and the higher the resolution.

λ This thing has been obligated for nine years to represent the wavelength of light, and the lower the wavelength in the formula, the higher the accuracy of the lithography machine.

Therefore, the premise of realizing Moore's law is to reduce the values of K1 and λ and increase the value of NA.

Compared with the patient work of grinding the lens, which is relatively slow to achieve results, shortening the wavelength of light has become the most direct and priority means to improve the accuracy of the lithography machine.

The early lithography machine is very soft-shelled, basically from the movie camera, and the exposure light source is also quite strange from the infrared end of the spectrum to the near-ultraviolet segment.

However, with the entry into effect of Moore's Law, the light source rapidly moved from the infrared end to the ultraviolet end, and the lens quickly surpassed the accuracy required by the cinema lens, and it became more and more difficult to process professionally.

In the 80s, the mainstream light source of the lithography machine began to use high-pressure mercury lamps, whose wavelength is 365nm, and the industry is called ~ i-line.

In the early nineties, after the accuracy of the lithography machine entered below 1.0 microns, the 356 nm wavelength provided by the high-pressure mercury lamp appeared to be very large, so the KrF laser became the mainstream light source of the lithography machine, and the light source with a wavelength of 248 nm was enough to advance the line width of the wafer production line to the nano era.

In the mid-90s, with the further reduction of the linewidth of the wafer production line, the DUV laser with a wavelength of 193nm began to emerge, and the Duv laser is also the famous ArF excimer laser, which is used in a variety of cross-industry engineering applications, including the treatment of myopia eye surgery, and the related laser generator and optical lens technology are relatively mature.

In the electronics industry, I was glad that the 193nm light source was unable to progress at 193nm due to the pleasure of reducing R&D costs due to its wide range of applications.

Since the mid-nineties, until Liang Yuan smuggled in, the light source of the lithography machine has been maintained at 193nm for nearly 20 years, it can be said that until the moment when someone smuggled into the plane, the main chips of all mainstream mobile phones, computers, tablets, supercomputers, graphics cards, and routers in the world are still photographed by the 193nm light source, and the 193nm light source has become the first stubborn cornerstone in the ultra-high-speed development of the human information age.

Since 1975, Moore's Law or Moore's prediction has matured, the global semiconductor industry has been running wildly for more than 20 years along the scientific and technological road given by Dr. Moore, until the end of the twentieth century before hitting an iron wall that cannot be broken through ~~193nm, the lithography machine light source has been stuck on this wavelength for a small 20 years, and the inter was complained about as a toothpaste factory at the turn of the century is just a first-line reaction in the consumer field when the lithography machine technology is stagnant.

Since the mid-nineties, scientists and the electronics industry have come up with a variety of solutions beyond 193nm, including 157nm F2 lasers, electron beam projection (EPL), ion projection (IPL), EUV (13.5nm), and X-rays.

157nm F2: Every major lithography company is researching, but Toyo Nikon is the first to launch a product that meets commercial standards.

157nm light will be absorbed by the lenses used in the existing mainstream 193nm machines, and the photoresist will have to be redeveloped, so it is extremely difficult to transform the production line, almost starting from scratch, and the 157nm light source has only less than 25% of the wavelength of 193nm, and the R&D investment-output ratio is too low.

I don't know if Toyo is fortunate or unlucky, but thanks to its national craftsmanship, Nikon is really great, and it is the first to solve the wavelength problem of light sources that has plagued the world for more than ten years.

But unfortunately, at that time, the Chinese scientist Dr. Lin Benjian's idea of adding water to the photoresist had directly changed the wavelength of the 193 light source to 137nm through refraction, and in the future, the linewidth of the 193 light source was directly advanced to below 10 nanometers, which directly sent the technology developed by Nikon with huge investment back to his hometown without any suspense.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Dr. Lin Benjian directly sank the Toyo electronics industry with his own strength, you must know that Nikon's research and development of 157nm light source is by no means a light source problem, and its supporting lenses, photoresists, chemical preparations, workshop circuits, etc. are almost all new, which is almost equivalent to changing the entire wafer production line or the foundation of the electronics industry.

Thanks to the strong strength of Toyo's electronic supporting industry, around the 157nm light source, the Toyo electronics industry chain has participated in countless large and small companies, and the results have been discounted together.

In addition to the 157 light source, the 13.5nm EUV LLC is also the light source that is most likely to be put into large-scale commercial applications before Liang Yuan's smuggling of human technology, including Intel, AMD, Motorola, the U.S. Department of Energy, ASML, Infineon, Micron, etc.

1nm Proximity X-Ray: This camp includes ASET, Mitsubishi, NEC, Toshiba, NTT, IBM, Motorola, which is also a camp sunk by Dr. Lin Benjian, because the laboratory has always been at the forefront of the industry, this camp started at the end of the eighties, using close exposure production, originally planned to be used as a backup technology after the 157 light source, in the new century, although not as unlucky as Nikon, just the product is mature, but the United States and Japan have also invested billions of dollars in this direction, and they have not yet come out and have been cool and do not know whether it is fortunate or unfortunate.

0.004nm EBDW or EPL: Lucent ~ Bell Labs, IBM, Canon, Nikon, ASML was invited to join and took the lead in withdrawing, the scientific name of this camp is called electron beam direct writing technology, which is the most suspenseful and romantic of all lithography technology camps, and it is also the physical limit of lithography technology, and it is the main intention of Fang Weilin.

After Nikon was defeated by ASML, it bet on the electron beam direct writing technology to fight to the death, but unfortunately the difficulty of developing this thing can be called controllable nuclear fusion in the electronics industry, and until the moment when Liang Yuan smuggled in, he didn't hear any big news from Nikon, which had been in the pit for ten years.

Generally speaking, the frontier of science and technology is mainly engaged in basic science and technology research and development, and basic science and technology are often ahead of industrial applications for more than ten years or even hundreds of years, such as Einstein's mass-energy equation and relativity, and the frontier of the industry is dominated by university oriented laboratories and various enterprise research institutes, laboratory technology is basically the mainstream technology of the industry in the future, often five to ten years ahead of the existing technology of the industry, for example, Nokia Labs in 2000 once made a personal electronic terminal similar to the Apple mobile phone in the laboratory, but unfortunately it was shot by Nokia executives。

Similarly, in the early nineties, engaged in the research and development of the electronics industry of the major companies of the frontier laboratory, has found that after the 193nm wavelength, the development of the light source suddenly fell into a great dilemma, the existing materials do not support the shorter wavelength of the light source has the possibility of mass application, continue to shorten the wavelength can only be pinned on the discovery of new materials or the 153nm wavelength light source with low yield, update most of the equipment of the existing electronics industry.

Because the chip industry belongs to the high-tech industry, the frontier and the production line are very closely linked, and the research and development dilemma of the laboratory was soon transmitted to the industry, and although the 193nm light source has not yet been popularized, there have been faint signs of the future camp.

As the only microelectronics group in the Republic that can touch the tail of the industry's frontier, the internal technical route of the future is naturally disputed, there are 193nm to decide to only look at the present, there are 153nm, compared with 193nm to increase 25% is also an improvement, right, compared with extreme ultraviolet light reflection EUV lithography, the research and development difficulty of 153nm equipment is really reduced by an order of magnitude, it seems to be a good plan for overtaking in corners.

There are also some R&D personnel who are not small and have a radical temperament to stand directly in Euv, and the most radical is optimistic that the electron beam direct writing technology is the best choice to break through the 193nm light source in the future.

In the future Internet era, there is a widely spread truth, only the sling wire is a multiple-choice question, the local tyrant has always been all, Hong Kong-based power collection is the sling wire in the global electronics industry, how can there be energy in the four camps all invest in research and development funds, can stick to a camp is not left too far thank God.

Funds are limited, and individuals think that in the face of the looming 193nm threshold, their own direction is correct, in the case of Liang Yuan does not intervene, the Hong Kong base has become a mess inside, and the electron beam direct writing scheme is the first plan to be shot by the top management of the Hong Kong base collector.

Due to the characteristics of the electron beam, the electron beam direct writing technology can be four or five generations ahead of the exposure technology in terms of accuracy, that is to say, in the era when the mainstream technology of the wafer production line is 1.0 microns, the electron beam direct writing technology can directly advance the process line width to 0.13 microns.

It seems that why was such a bullish technology killed by the executives of Gangji Collector in the first place?

Generally speaking, in the early 90s, the number of wafers processed by the lithography machine of the mainstream technology was about 150 to 200 pieces per hour, while the number of wafers processed by the electron beam direct writing technology was about three to five wafers per hour.

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