Nanolithography: How Small Will We Go?: Harry J. Levinson AMD

Nanolithography:
How Small Will We go?
Harry J. Levinson
AMD
Progress in microprocessors
~ 10, 000 transistors
Smallest feature ~ 5 microns
~ 2 cm
December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 2
Progress in microprocessors
1993 1995 1998 2003 2005
AMD AMD dual core

Opteron ™
Processor OpteronTM
AMD Processor
Athlon ™
Processor
AMD K6 ®-III
Processor
AMD
Am486 ®
Processor
0.35 m 0.25 m 180 nm 130 nm 90 nm

1.2 million 9 million 37 million 100 million 233 million
transistors transistors transistors transistors transistors
35 mm2 78 mm2 120 mm2 193 mm2 199 mm2

Making chips with lithography
light
mask
lens
resist
silicon wafer

Making chips with lithography
resist
insulating insulating
layer layer
resist
coat
source gate drain
align, expose
and
develop
resist
insulating
etch of the
layer
insulating layer
source gate drain and
resist strip

Manufacturing costs
An AMD dual core Opteron microprocessor has 233 million transistors.

Each transistor needs 3 electrical contacts.
There are ~700 million contact holes per chip.
In AMD’s factories these are made at the rate of ~35 billion per second.
Drilling one hole every

three seconds, it would
take over 3000 years
to drill 35 billion holes.

Why is semiconductor lithography so efficient?

Manufacturing costs
If it costs too much, only large companies will be able to afford it.

Process control
Dual core Athlon64 prices
$600
$400 long gates

Price
$200
$0
3800+ 4200+ 4600+ 5000+
Processor rating
What is hard about nanolithography?
light light
mask
lens
ideal light
intensity
intensity
light
photoresist

Printing small features is hard!
180 nm lines and spaces
1.2
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
-200 -100 0 100 200
Dis ta nc e (nm )
1.2
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
-200 -100 0 100 200
Dis ta nc e (nm )
1.2
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
-100 -50 0 50 100
Dis tanc e (nm )
Isolated small features are not enough!
• To put a lot of transistors on a chip, they need to be close to each

other.
Linewidth + spacewidth = pitch
challenge
Resolution limit of optical lithography
light
m
sin  =
pn
grating
p = pitch
 = wavelength of light
m = -2  m = +2
n = index of refraction
m = -1 m = +1 of the material in the
m=0 space below the mask

At least two plane waves must intersect to produce

a pattern.
 2
Ae ik  x
= A2
   2  
Ae ik  x
+ Ae - ik  x
= A cos ( k  x )
2 2

m
sin  =
pn
lens
⇒ optical contrast disappears

0.5
half - pitch = p/2 ≤
nsinM

i m
sin  - sin i =
pn

M 0.25
half - pitch = p / 2 ≤
nsinM
lens

Move to the wafer plane

At the wafer plane the rule is still:
lens 0.25
half - pitch = p / 2 ≤
n sin W
W

Finally...
p 0.25
>
2 n sin 
Since one cannot go right to the limit of perfect optics, minimum feature size is
usually represented by:
k1
Minimum half - pitch =
n sin 
There are four ways to make things smaller:

1) Make k1 as close to 0.25 as possible,
2) Shorter wavelength,
3) Larger sin ,
4) Larger n.

k1
• k1 represents the ability to approach physical limits.

• Lenses.
• Aberrations.
• Design.
• Materials.
• Manufacturing.
• Resists.
• Contrast.
• Equipment and process control in manufacturing.

k1
• When I first started as a lithographer k1  1.
• Today in manufacturing.
• Memories.
2-3× reduction
• k1  0.3.
• Logic.
• k1  0.4
Very little opportunity left for reducing feature size through reduction of k1.

Progress in Lithography
• Impact made by changes in wavelength.
Mercury arc lamps Excimer lasers
g-line  i-line  KrF  ArF
436 nm  365 nm  248 nm  193 nm
1 0.44×

Why not x-rays?
1.2
1
Transmission
Calcium fluoride
0.8 Fused silica
0.6 Ohara S-FPL51Y
0.4 Schott BK-7
0.2
0
150
250
100
200
300
350
400
Wavelength (nm) 450

What is the shortest wavelength possible?
±20 nm
source gate drain

• Photomasks today are made from fused silica.
• Fused silica has a number of advantageous properties.

– Chemical stability.
– Transparency for ultraviolet light.
– No intrinsic birefringence.
– A low coefficient of thermal expansion.

• A low coefficient of thermal expansion.

• 0.5 ppm/oC.
– If a mask changes temperature by 0.1oC, then the distance
between two features separated by 50 mm will change by 2.5
nm.
– This change in registration can be absorbed into overlay
budgets.
• After reduction by 4×.

• The transparency of fused silica falls off sharply for wavelengths

< 157 nm.
• An alternative material must be used.

– CaF2.
• The coefficient of thermal expansion of CaF2 is 19 ppm/oC.

– Versus 0.5 ppm/oC for fused silica.
• The 2.5 nm of mask registration error becomes nearly 100 nm.

What goes wrong at  < 157 nm?
There will be no optical

lithography for wavelengths
193 nm.
< 157

sin 

Optical contrast disappears when the feature size = 0.25
n sin 
First sin = 0.28.


Today: maximum sin = 0.93.
lens

sin 
2ZtanΘ
Θ Θ
Mirror Θ
Optics Coating
Optics
mounting α tanΘ α tanΘ control α tanΘ
diameter
sensitivity requirement
Lens complexity α tanΘ

sin 
NA q tanq
o
1.30 65 2.14
o
1.35 70 2.75
Potential resolution Lens complexity

improvement: increase:
~3.5% ~29%

n

Optical contrast disappears when the feature size = 0.25
n sin 
lens
At 193 nm, nwater = 1.435.
wafer

Refractive indices
nglass > nfluid
1
nglass
nfluid
2

Limitations of water
• nsin ≤ 0.93*min(nglass, nfluid, nresist)
• Indices of refraction for water immersion.

• SiO2: 1.56
• CaF2: 1.51 0.93*1.435 = 1.33
• Water: 1.435
• Resists ~ 1.70

Options beyond water
• Options for high index immersion lithography.

• Glass.
• BaLiF3: 1.64
• Lutetium aluminum garnet (Lu3Al5O12, LuAG): 2.1
• Pyrope (Mg3Al2Si3O12): 2.0
• Fluid.
• Cyclic organics, such as decalene: 1.64-1.65
0.93*1.65 = 1.54

Pitches are limited by physics
= +
Pitches are limited by physics – minimum linewidths are not!

Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV)
• EUV lithography involves reflection optics and masks.
NA = 0.14
 = 13.5 nm Wafer
M4
M3
M1 M2
Mask

EUV Lithography
• High reflectivity is achieved through the use of multi-layer

Bragg reflectors.
Absorber
Multilayer reflector
~ 70% reflectance @  =
13.5 nm with MoSi
multilayers
EUV Lithography
Absorber

55 nm contacts using EUV lithography
Dense Dense Iso Iso

(aligned) (staggered) (aligned) (staggered)
EUV = Extreme Ultra Violet

Transitions in optical lithographic technologies
From To Comment
g-line i-line Minor process changes.
i-line KrF Major changes:

 Type of light source (arc lamp  excimer laser).
 Invention of new resist concept was required.
 Only fused silica for lenses.
 It took a decade.
KrF ArF Few significant changes:

 Light sources still excimer lasers.
 Resists still based on existing concept.
ArF ArF Few significant changes:

immersion  Same light sources, resist platforms.
ArF EUV Total paradigm shift

immersion

Early KrF excimer laser uptime
100
90
80
70
Uptime (%)
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
October,
November
December
January,
February
March
April
May
June
1991
1990

Light sources
• Our early KrF lasers were made by the first company to produce
excimer lasers commercially.
• Very successful supplier of excimer lasers for medical
applications and to laboratories in general.
• Less successful for lithographic applications.
• The measured reliability in millions of pulses, not
billions of pulses.

EUV light sources – did we do our homework?
• Light sources for optical lithography

• Mercury g-line
• Mercury i-line All have high intensity within a
• KrF excimer laser narrow bandwidth
• ArF excimer laser
• Light sources for EUV lithography must match the wavelengths

at which MoSi multilayers have high reflectivity.

Shot noise and line-edge roughness (LER)
Shipley EUV 2H resist

patterned with EUV 10x
microstepper at Sandia
National Laboratory

Keep the reticle clean!
AMD dual core

OpteronTM Processor
233M transistors
199 mm2 (90 nm technology)

Life without pellicles?
reticle mask pattern
frame
pellicle

EUV Lithography
• High reflectivity is achieved through the use of multi-layer

Bragg reflectors.
Absorber
Multilayer reflector

Lithography costs
$50,000,000
$40,000,000
Exposure tool price
$30,000,000
$20,000,000
Historical tool prices
$10,000,000
$0
1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Year
Lithography costs
$50,000,000
$40,000,000
Exposure tool price
$30,000,000
$20,000,000
Historical tool prices
$10,000,000
$0
1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Year
Lithography costs
10
Tool price/silicon area/hr
8
(arb. units)
6
lower is
4 better
0
1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
Year

Lithography costs
10
Tool price/silicon area/hr
8
(arb. units)
6
lower is
4 better
0
1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

Summary (I)
• The end of optical lithography is finally approaching.

– But not immediately!
• 193 nm is likely the last optical wavelength.

– n tbd
• Introducing post-optical lithographic technologies will be hard and

expensive.
• The speed at which we travel over the roadmap could slow down.

Summary (II)
• This is not the end of the microelectronics industry!
• Recent innovations are not always derived from lithography.
Introduced
with 130 nm
technology

Thing required by the #$%^&* lawyers
Trademark Attribution
AMD, the AMD Arrow logo and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. Other names used in this presentation are for identification
purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
©2005 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Nanolithography:

How Small Will We go?

~ 10, 000 transistors

Smallest feature ~ 5 microns

1993 1995 1998 2003 2005

AMD AMD dual core

0.35 m 0.25 m 180 nm 130 nm 90 nm

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 3

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 4

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 5

An AMD dual core Opteron microprocessor has 233 million transistors.

Drilling one hole every

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 6

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 7

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 8

Dual core Athlon64 prices

$400 long gates

180 nm lines and spaces

130 nm lines and spaces

90 nm lines and spaces

• To put a lot of transistors on a chip, they need to be close to each

Linewidth + spacewidth = pitch

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 15

At least two plane waves must intersect to produce

⇒ optical contrast disappears

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 16

⇒ optical contrast disappears

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 17

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 18

There are four ways to make things smaller:

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 19

• k1 represents the ability to approach physical limits.

• Equipment and process control in manufacturing.

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 20

• When I first started as a lithographer k1  1.

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 21

• Impact made by changes in wavelength.

Mercury arc lamps Excimer lasers

g-line  i-line  KrF  ArF

436 nm  365 nm  248 nm  193 nm

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 22

Wavelength (nm) 450

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 23

source gate drain

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 24

• Photomasks today are made from fused silica.

• Fused silica has a number of advantageous properties.

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 25

• A low coefficient of thermal expansion.

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 26

• The transparency of fused silica falls off sharply for wavelengths

• An alternative material must be used.

• The coefficient of thermal expansion of CaF2 is 19 ppm/oC.

• The 2.5 nm of mask registration error becomes nearly 100 nm.

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 27

There will be no optical

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 28

First sin = 0.28.

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 29

Lens complexity α tanΘ

Potential resolution Lens complexity

December, 2006 Harry J. Levinson 31