Extremely long life excimer laser chamber technology for multi-patterning lithography

Multi-patterning techniques with ArF immersion lithography is expected to continue as main solution for manufacturing IC chips. The reduction of laser downtime has great impact on the productivity of chipmakers. The laser downtime is closely related to the lifetime of consumable parts of the laser. Gigaphoton has developed longer life excimer laser chamber which contains a new technology “New-type G-electrode”. This new type excimer laser chamber demonstrated 1.3 times longer lifetime than conventional excimer laser chamber. Gigaphoton has also introduced new design of LNM (Line Narrowing Module) last year. Through combines timing of maintenance of new type excimer laser chamber and new type LNM, it’s expected that the downtime of the laser is significantly reduced than ever. This leads to the improvement of the throughput on ArFi lithography.