Leading lithographic equipment manufacturer ASML has managed to reduce the minimum resolution to 8 nm, Tom’s Hardware, an American online computer technology publication, reported on May 28.
At the imec ITF World 2024 exhibition, company representatives announced that they were able to achieve two new and important results at once: an increase in print resolution and a noticeable increase in speed.
The lithographic equipment currently used in the mass production of chips makes it possible to achieve a printing precision of up to 13.5 nm, which corresponds to the wavelength of the radiation source used. Two months ago, ASML announced that, together with the imec institute, they managed to achieve a resolution of 10 nm. Now it is announced that it has reached the 8nm mark.
In addition to reducing the minimum element size, we were able to radically increase speed. Production speed was raised from the current 200-300 mm of wafers per hour to 400-500.
The main goal of ASML is to increase the speed of wafer processing. The finer the technical process, the more expensive and difficult it is to switch to it, the more chips must be produced to reduce the cost of the final products. Increasing the printing speed allows you to offset part of the costs of equipment, infrastructure, technology and the development of a new technical process.
We remind you that the 3, 5, 7 nm technical processes called by leading chip manufacturers do not indicate the sizes of individual elements. This is a synthetic measure that is partly marketing in nature.
Basically, 3 nm means that electrons or “holes” pass through the semiconductor junction at the same speed as if the junction with a conventional structure were 3 nm in size. For this, special physical and chemical manipulations with the material of the semiconducting structure are used.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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