EUV Lithography: State-of-the-Art Review

Although several years delayed than its initial plan, extreme UV lithography (EUVL) with 13.5nm wavelength has been finally implemented into high volume manufacture (HVM) of mainstream semiconductor industry since 2018. With the delivery and installation of ASML EUV scanners in those giant Fab players like Samsung, TSMC and Intel, EUV lithography is becoming a sort of industry standard exposure metrology for those critical layers of advanced technology nodes beyond 7nm. Although ASML NXE EUVL scanner is the only commercialized EUV exposure system available on the market, its development is the concentration of all essence from worldwide industrial and academic collaboration. It is becoming more and more important not only for fab runners but also for main stream fabless design houses to understand and participate the progress of EUVL. In this review, working principles, module structures and technical challenges have been briefly discussed regarding each EUV subsystem, including light source, reflection mirrors and system, reticle module as well as photoresist development. EUV specific issues of light intensity, defectivity within reflection system, line edge roughness (LER) and mask 3D effects have been focused respectively and promising solutions have been summarized as well.