ArF and KrF excimer lasers are widely used as a light source for the lithography process of semiconductor
manufacturing. The excimer lasers consume laser gas mixture in a discharge chamber as laser media, and more than
96% of the gas mixture is Neon. Recently Neon supply and demand balance became critical situation; the price has
risen two years ago due to the instability of politics and economy in Ukraine. Although Neon price decreased now, its
price is still higher than two years ago. Gigaphoton has released gas consumption reduction, called Total Gas
Management (TGM) series, as part of the green activities. Conventional gas consumption reduction (eTGM) achieved
50% gas consumption reductions from the former gas control (sTGM) by optimizing the laser gas control.
In order to reduce gas consumption further, Gigaphoton has been developing new gas recycle system hTGM.
hTGM purifies used gas so that laser can use it repeatedly. Field evaluation of KrF-hTGM system has been started.
The system was connected to five KrF laser systems and achieved 85% of the gas recycling ratio, keeping stable laser
performance. Also, internal evaluation of ArF-hTGM system has been started. The system was connected to one ArF
laser and achieved 92% of the gas recycling ratio, keeping stable laser performance.
193nm ArF eximer lasers are expected to continue to be the main solution in photolithography, since advanced
lithography tecnologies such as Multiple patterning and Self-aligned double patterning (SADP) are being developed. In
order to appliy these tecnologies to high-volume semiconductor manufactureing, the key is to contain chip
manufactureing costs. Therefore, improvement on Reliability, Availability and Maintainability of ArF excimer lasers is
important.[1] We works on improving productivity and reducing downtime of ArF exmer lasers, which leads to
Reliability, Availability and Maintainability improvemnet. First in this paper, our focus drilling tecnique, which
increases depth of focus (DoF) by spectral bandwidth tuning is introdueced. This focus drilling enables to increase DoF
for isolated contact holes. and it not degrades the wafer stage speed.[2] Second, a technique which eables to reduce gas
refill time to zero is introduced. This technique reduces downtime so Availavility is expected to improve. In this paper,
we report these tecniques by using simulation resutls and partially experimental resutls provided by a semiconductor
manufacturer.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.