From left: Drew Willard, Brendan Reagan and Issa Tamer work on the Huge Aperture Thulium (BAT) laser system. (Photograph: Jason Laurea/LLNL)
EUV, excessive ultraviolet lithography, is almost utterly related to the Dutch firm ASML, the one maker of EUV machines which might be utilized by TSMC, Intel and different chip producers of superior HPC-AI chips.
Now Lawerence Livermore Nationwide Laboratory has introduced it’s going to lead a four-year, $12 million analysis partnership charged with laying the groundwork for the following evolution of EUV lithography. their work is centered round a lab-developed driver system dubbed the Big Aperture Thulium (BAT) laser.
EUV is a kind of photolithography that makes use of 13.5 nm excessive ultraviolet gentle from a laser-pulsed tin plasma to create intricate patterns on semiconductor substrates. ASML EUV machines are the dimensions of a college bus, weigh greater than 150 tons and are priced at practically $400 million. (Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal called the “essentially the most indispensable machine on this planet.”)
The venture will check the BAT laser’s potential to extend EUV supply effectivity by about 10 instances in contrast with carbon dioxide lasers, the present business customary. This might result in a subsequent era “past EUV” lithography system producing chips which might be smaller, extra highly effective and sooner to fabricate whereas utilizing much less electrical energy.
The crew will take part within the Excessive Lithography & Supplies Innovation Middle (ELMIC), one of many facilities chosen for the Division of Power (DOE) Workplace of Science’s Microelectronics Science Research Centers (MSRCs). DOE announced $179 million in funding for the three MSRCs, which had been approved as a part of the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.
ELMIC goals to advance the essential science driving the combination of latest supplies and processes into future microelectronic methods. The LLNL-led venture is geared toward increasing understanding round EUV era and plasma-based particle sources. Different ELMIC tasks will concentrate on key analysis areas akin to plasma-based nanofabrication, 2D-material methods and extreme-scale reminiscence.
“We now have carried out the theoretical plasma simulations and proof of idea laser demonstrations over the previous 5 years that lay the foundations for this venture,” mentioned LLNL laser physicist Brendan Reagan. “Our work has already had fairly an impression within the EUV lithography neighborhood, so now we’re excited to take this subsequent step.”
Reagan and LLNL plasma physicist Jackson Williams are the venture’s co-lead principal investigators. The venture consists of scientists from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; ASML San Diego; and the Superior Analysis Middle for Nanolithography (ARCNL), a public-private analysis heart primarily based within the Netherlands.
EUV lithography includes high-power lasers firing at tens of 1000’s of droplets of tin per second. The laser heats the droplets, every measuring about 30 millionths of a meter, to half 1,000,000 levels centigrade to supply a plasma that generates ultraviolet gentle with a wavelength of 13.5 nanometers.
Particular multi-layer mirrors information the sunshine via plates referred to as masks, which maintain the intricate patterns of the built-in circuits for semiconductor wafers. The sunshine tasks the sample onto a photoresist layer that’s etched away to depart the built-in circuits on the chip.
The LLNL-led venture will examine the first speculation that vitality effectivity of present EUV lithography sources for semiconductor manufacturing could be improved with expertise developed for the novel petawatt-class BAT laser, which makes use of thulium-doped yttrium lithium fluoride because the acquire medium via which the facility and depth of laser beams are elevated.
The distinctive central wavelength of thulium-doped yttrium lithium fluoride, lasing at about 2 microns, differs from all different intense lasers that function at about or lower than 1 micron or at 10 microns. The venture would be the first exploration of joule-class laser-target coupling at 2 microns.
This builds on the work made potential by inside investments from LLNL’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program in addition to externally funded help from the DOE Workplace of Science’s Workplace of Excessive Power Physics Accelerator Stewardship Program, and the Protection Superior Analysis Tasks Company.
The researchers plan to exhibit pairing the compact high-rep-rate BAT laser with applied sciences that generate sources of EUV gentle utilizing formed nanosecond pulses and high-energy X-rays and particles utilizing ultrashort sub-picosecond pulses.
“This venture will set up the primary high-power, high-repetition-rate, about 2-micron laser at LLNL,” Williams mentioned. “The capabilities enabled by the BAT laser additionally will make a major impression on the fields of excessive vitality density physics and inertial fusion vitality.”
Lots of the experiments will probably be carried out on the Jupiter Laser Facility (JLF) at LLNL. JLF is a mid-scale person facility, which simply accomplished a four-year-long refurbishment, and is a member of LaserNetUS, a DOE Workplace of Science Fusion Power Sciences community of excessive energy laser services in North America.
This reveals high-repetition-rate laser bursts into LLNL’s Jupiter Laser Facility Titan goal space (heart), the place the BAT laser beams hit two goal configurations: short-pulse irradiating liquid circulation sheets for energetic particles (left) and long-pulse irradiating droplets for EUV era and different experiments (proper). (Illustration: Janelle Cataldo/LLNL)
Since its inception, the semiconductor business has engaged in a relentless race to make every era of microprocessors smaller but extra highly effective by packing as many built-in circuits and different options as potential into one chip. For the previous a number of years, EUV lithography has taken the forefront as a result of it makes use of EUV gentle to etch microscopic circuits as small as a number of nanometers onto superior chips and processors.
Reagan famous that the Lab has lengthy pioneered the event of EUV lithography, together with early spectroscopic research that fashioned the inspiration of plasma-based EUV sources.
A 1997 cooperative research project involving LLNL, Sandia Nationwide Laboratories and Lawrence Berkeley Nationwide Laboratory led to the event of the Engineering Test Stand, the primary prototype EUV publicity device.
Moreover, the Lab developed environment friendly multilayer optics which might be instrumental in transporting and delivering the EUV gentle for lithography. Beforehand, LLNL partnered with ASML to use the Lab’s in depth plasma simulation capabilities to optimize supply effectivity.
Over time, LLNL’s in depth multidisciplinary analysis contributed to multilayer coating science and expertise, optics metrology, gentle sources, lasers, high-performance computing and, notably, the historic achievement of fusion ignition at NIF in December 2022.
ASML, which makes the EUV lithography machines utilized by the largest business producers of those chips, makes use of CO2 pulsed lasers to drive the EUV gentle sources. However LLNL analysis over the previous decade confirmed that newer diode-driven solid-state laser expertise gives a promising path towards attaining larger energy and better general effectivity for EUV lithography methods.
Along with Reagan and Williams, key members of LLNL’s multidisciplinary crew embrace Félicie Albert, Leily Kiani, Emily Hyperlink, Thomas Spinka, Issa Tamer and Scott Wilks.
The venture additionally consists of Siegfried Glenzer, SLAC’s excessive vitality density division director and a former LLNL plasma physics group chief, Michael Purvis, ASML’s lead EUV supply analysis technologist and Oscar Versolato, head of the supply division at ARCNL.
supply: Benny Evangelista, Livermore Lab
