IBM and AMD have announced world's first working chip made with extreme ultra-violet (EUV) litography for the critical layers. The wafers was processed in AMD's Fab36 in Dresden, Germany using 193nm immersion litography and later shipped to IBM's Research Facility at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) in Albany, New York. There they used an ASML EUV lithography scanner to pattern the first layer of metal interconnects between the transistors.
Patterning, etching and metal deposition processing was followed by electrical testing which revealed identical characteristics as chips made with regular immersion litography. This will be followed by further processing to test large memory arrays by adding additional interconnects.
Previous projects have only only been working in the "narrow field", meaning only parts of a chip had been processed with EUV litography. This time they've used a "full-field" EUV litography covering the whole 22x33mm AMD 45nm chip. Next up is using EUV litography for more critical layers, and not only the interconnects, to show that an entire microprocessor can be made with EUV litography.
We're getting closer and closer to what is possible with regular immersion litography. Although, this kind of optical litography is not expected to be in use for mass production until 2016, when the 22nm half-pitch node is expected to come into play.
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