The future of EUV lithography: enabling Moore's Law in the next decade

While EUV systems equipped with a 0.33 Numerical Aperture lenses are readying to start volume manufacturing, ASML and Zeiss are ramping up their development activities on a EUV exposure tool with Numerical Aperture greater than 0.5. The purpose of this scanner, targeting a resolution of 8nm, is to extend Moore’s law throughout the next decade. A novel, anamorphic lens design, has been developed to provide the required Numerical Aperture; this lens will be paired with new, faster stages and more accurate sensors enabling Moore’s law economical requirements, as well as the tight focus and overlay control needed for future process nodes. The tighter focus and overlay control budgets, as well as the anamorphic optics, will drive innovations in the imaging and OPC modelling, and possibly in the metrology concepts. Furthermore, advances in resist and mask technology will be required to image lithography features with less than 10nm resolution. This paper presents an overview of the key technology innovations and infrastructure requirements for the next generation EUV systems.