Keeping Moore‘s law alive: EUV sources for nanolithography

Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light at 13.5-nm wavelength drives the next generation of nanolithography machines. The step towards EUV is crucial to the continuation of the miniaturization of the features on chips. Ever since the seventies, the miniaturization is well-represented by Moore’s law, which predicts that the number of transistors on an affordable CPU doubles every two years. Present-day technology employs 193-nm light. The shorter the wavelength, the better the resolution, therefore much smaller features can be printed with EUV-based lithography. Highly charged tin ions in plasma of exploding droplets are the atomic sources of EUV light.
The Advanced Research Center for Nanolithography (ARCNL) is a public-private partnership between the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), the University of Amsterdam, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and the semiconductor equipment manufacturer ASML. ARCNL is founded in response to the need of ASML for basic research with a long-term application perspective and a potential for breakthrough solutions in the generation and use of extreme ultraviolet light for lithography. ASML is the world market leader of lithography tools for application in the semiconductor industry.
Given the substantial industrial and societal interest in plasma EUV sources, it is remarkable how little is actually known about the physical processes that generate EUV light. After a general introduction on EUV-driven nanolithography machines and ARCNL’s mission the talk will address many of the challenges related to the efficient generation of EUV light.