X‐ray lithography: On the path to manufacturing

X‐ray lithography has been an active area of research and development for the last 20 years, and recent spectacular results using complete, integrated x‐ray lithography systems have demonstrated, at the research level, the viability of x‐ray lithography, and have shown that x–ray lithography is on the path to manufacturing. This paper presents IBM’s recent successful development of a synchrotron‐radiation‐based x‐ray lithography system. The individual components of the system are described, along with a brief description of available alternate components. Measurements of the lithographic performance of the integrated system are presented, and the use of this system for the fabrication of fully‐scaled 0.5 μm CMOS circuits is described.