Moving Into the
Extreme Ultraviolet

A decisive element for safeguarding our outstanding
technological position is the early research in the area
of even shorter wavelengths than excimer lasers
currently offer. Lambda Physik® AG and Jenoptik AG
formed a joint venture, XTREME technologies GmbH, in March 2001.
Under this joint venture, both companies are dedicating themselves to the promising
field of nanotechnology research and, in particular, to the continued development of
lithography technology in the extreme ultraviolet range. These represent the
technology for beam sources of tomorrow and beyond. In the year 2007,
semiconductor chips with significantly improved computation and storage
capabilities for new computer generations will have features sizes of 50 nm.
Manufacturing of these computer chips will require a technology called Extreme
Ultra Violet (EUV) lithography.
EUV lithography will be successor of ultraviolet lithography, which uses excimer
lasers as illumination sources. The wavelength for EUV will be 10 to 20 times
shorter than that of excimer lasers, providing the means to reduce minimum feature
sizes on chips accordingly. Developing high power radiation sources for EUV
lithography is one of the most challenging tasks in the development of EUV
lithography. XTREME technologies has taken this challenge and is working on
bright radiation sources for 13.5 nm EUV lithography.
The company follows in its research both of the most important technologies:
EUV generation by gas discharge plasma excitation and laser excitation.