Electron Beam Direct Writing technology for LSI prototyping business

When manufacturing prototype devices or small volume production custom logic LSIs, the products are being less profitable because of the skyrocketing mask and design costs recent technology node. For 65 nm technology node and beyond, the reduction of mask cost becomes critical issue for logic devices especially. We have applied to Electron Beam Direct Writing (EBDW) technology mainly to critical interconnect layers which are more cost sensitive than other layers. We required a breakthrough to apply EBDW technology to a production environment, and we overcame some difficult issues. We have already started EBDW technology for 65 nm node business with sufficient yield and process margin of production level. In this paper, our technical outputs to achieve practical use of EBDW for 65 nm node and beyond, and our future prospects for EBDW evolution to play a principal part in next generation lithography will be discussed. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.