Bypassing EUV technology, Canon began selling 5nm chip production equipment
News on October 14, the lithography machine manufacturer Canon (Canon) recently announced through a press release that it has begun to sell chip production equipment FPA-1200NZ2C based on "nanoprinted lithography" technology. Canon said the device uses a different approach from complex lithography and can make 5nm chips.
After the semiconductor process technology entered the 5nm node, EUV lithography machine has become an indispensable key equipment. However, because EUV lithography machines are expensive, each price exceeds 100 million US dollars, and EUV lithography machines are only produced by ASML in the Netherlands to be supplied, and the production capacity is limited, which makes the production cost of chips greatly increased.
To this end, since 2017, semiconductor equipment manufacturer Canon has cooperated with memory chip manufacturer Kioxia and mask and other semiconductor component manufacturers Dainippon Printing Co., Ltd. (DNP) to develop mass production technology based on nanoimprint (NIL) at the Kioxia factory in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture, Japan, which can advance process technology to 5nm without EUV lithography machines.
Canon said that the production equipment works differently from the lithography machine of industry leader ASML, which does not use the principle of optical image projection to transfer the microstructure of integrated circuits to silicon wafers, but is more similar to printing technology, directly forming patterns through imprinting.
Compared with the EUV lithography technology that has been commercialized, Kioxia said in 2021 that NIL technology can greatly reduce energy consumption and reduce equipment costs. The reason is that the micro-imaging process of NIL technology is relatively simple, and the power consumption can be reduced to 10% of EUV technology, and the equipment investment can be reduced to 40% of EUV-only devices. At present, EUV lithography machine can only be produced and supplied by ASML in the Netherlands, which is not only expensive, but also requires the cooperation of many testing equipment.
However, although NIL technology has many advantages, there are still many problems to be solved at this stage in the introduction of mass production, including the possibility of more defective defects due to the influence of fine dust in the air.
For Kioxia, NAND components are easier to adapt to the NIL technology process because of their 3D three-dimensional stacking structure. Kioxia said at the time that the basic technical problems of NIL have been solved, and mass production technology is being promoted, hoping to be the first to introduce NAND production than other competitors. Once Kioxia can successfully introduce NIL technology and achieve mass production, it is expected to make up for the unfavorable situation in the equipment investment race and meet the needs of reducing carbon emissions.
According to DNP, NIL mass production technology circuits can be scaled up to the 5nm node, and DNP has been conducting internal simulations according to the specifications of the device since the spring of 2021. For such technological progress, DNP also revealed that the increase in inquiries from semiconductor manufacturers about NIL mass production technology shows that many manufacturers have high hopes for NIL technology.
However, after testing the NIL technology, Kioxia was complained by potential customers that the product defect rate was high, and it was not actually applied.
As a key equipment provider, Canon is not only promoting the mass production of NAND with NIL technology, but also aims to apply NIL mass production technology to a wide range of devices for manufacturing logic chips such as DRAM and CPU for PCs, so as to supply semiconductor manufacturers in the future, and also hope to apply it to the most advanced processes such as mobile phone application processors.
The equipment released by Canon can be applied to silicon wafers as small as 14 square millimeters, enabling the production of chips equivalent to 5nm processes.
Canon said it will continue to improve and develop the system, which is expected to be used to produce 2nm chips in the future.
Editor: Xinzhixun - Ronin Sword