Intel completes assembly of world’s most advanced EUV lithography system – Business
Intel Corp.’s newly formed chip foundry business said today it has achieved a crucial milestone for the chipmaking industry by completing the assembly of the world’s first commercial High Numerical Aperture Extreme Ultraviolet lithography scanner.
It’s a tongue-twisting name for what is said to be the most advanced piece of semiconductor manufacturing equipment ever made, and will pave the way for future generations of computer chips that are more advanced and more powerful than today’s processors.
Intel said its TWINSCAN EXE: 5000 High NA EUV tool was built by the Dutch chipmaking equipment manufacturer ASML Holding NV, before being assembled at its research and development facility in Hillsboro, Oregon, where it is now undergoing calibration steps. Once done, it will play a key role in advancing Intel Foundry’s future process roadmap. The company says the machine dramatically improves the resolution and feature-scaling of next-generation chips by transforming the optics design used to project printed images onto silicon wafers.
Next-generation EUV
High NA EUV lithography is widely seen as the next evolution of EUV lithography, a technology used in the semiconductor industry for manufacturing integrated circuits. EUV is a type of photolithography that relies on extreme ultraviolet light that does not naturally occur on Earth, to create intricate patterns on silicon wafers.
According to Intel, this extreme ultraviolet light is created by a powerful laser hitting a droplet of tin heated to almost 220,000 degrees Celsius, which is almost 40 times hotter than the average surface temperature of the sun. The light is reflected off a mask containing a template of the desired circuit pattern, then channeled through an optical system that uses some of the most accurate mirrors ever fabricated, to etch those circuits onto the silicon.
Numerical Aperture is a measure of an EUV machines’ ability to collect and focus light. The High NA EUV technology uses a more advanced optics design to project patterns onto silicon wafers, enabling advances in both resolution and transistor size.
Intel’s upcoming 14A process
Intel spun off its foundry business as a separate entity in February, when it provided a detailed glimpse into its future Intel 14 manufacturing process.
Intel’s TWINSCAN EXE: 5000 High NA EUV machine is about the same size as a double-decker bus and it cost the company a reported $350 million. It arrived in Intel’s R&D facility late last year, and the company has been methodically piecing it together ever since then. Now that it’s online, it will be able to produce smaller transistors than any existing lithography system, enabling Intel to bring its most advanced manufacturing process to life.
At present, the gate-all-around Intel 18A node is the company’s most advanced manufacturing process, but this will be replaced by the Intel 14A process, which is expected to enter production by 2027.
The Intel 14A process will enable laser beams to carve transistors on silicon with a resolution of just eight nanometers, a significant improvement over the 13.5-nanometer resolution characterized by the Intel 18A process. In addition, Intel says, the High NA EUV machine will also reduce processor defects and increase chip production times.
“With the addition of High NA EUV, Intel will have the most well-rounded lithography toolbox in the industry, enabling the company to drive future process capabilities beyond Intel 18A into the second half of this decade,” said Intel Fellow and director of Lithography, Hardware and Solutions Mark Phillips.
Increased transistor density
The more advanced Intel 14A process will translate to more capable processors than those that exist today, paving the way for significant advancements in artificial intelligence and other emerging, high-performance computing applications.
ASML has already demonstrated at its own lab an ability to print 10-nanometer dense lines on silicon wafers at its R&D facility in Veldhoven in the Netherlands. They represent the finest lines ever printed on a chip, and serve to validate Intel’s 14A process ambitions.
Using the Intel 14A process, the chipmaker said, it will be able to print features on silicon chips that are up to 1.7 times smaller than those made by existing EUV machines. This opens the door to 2D feature scaling, the company said, resulting in up to 2.9-times greater density, extending the “Moore’s Law” hypothesis, which posits that the number of transistors on a chip will double every two years. Additionally, the High NA EUV supports higher imaging contrast with less light per exposure, which reduces the time needed to print each layer, accelerating wafer output.
Intel said the TWINSCAN EXE:5000 system was transported to its facility in Oregon inside more than 250 crates, which were shipped into the country inside 43 freight containers. The containers were then loaded into multiple cargo planes that brought them to Seattle, before being loaded onto 20 trucks for the final leg of the journey.
More advanced machines on the way
While Intel’s experts busy themselves with calibrating their new machine, the company is already planning a similar logistics operation for its next bit of kit – a TWINSCAN EXE:5200B system that promises to increase productivity yet more, with a capacity to etch more than 200 wafers per hour.
Intel may not win the race to get the newer-generation EUV machine online first, however. In December, the state of New York, IBM Corp., Micron Technology Inc. and several other organizations announced plans to build a state-of-the-art semiconductor research lab in Albany that will host the same system.
Those companies also plan to obtain a Twinscan EXE:5200 system, which will be used to enable an envisaged two-nanometer chip manufacturing process that’s even more advanced than Intel’s 14A, but it’s not clear when it will enter production.