Canon challenges ASML supremacy in chip manufacturing with a brand new nanoimprint lithography system
Ahead-looking: Canon is famend for its printers, cameras, and different imaging merchandise designed for each client and industrial use. The Japanese firm is now making use of its in depth data in optical and imaging applied sciences to enterprise into the extremely specialised subject of superior chip manufacturing tools.
Canon lately introduced the FPA-1200NZ2C, a bit of “nanoimprint semiconductor manufacturing” tools particularly designed for producing microchips and different semiconductor-based elements utilizing the newest manufacturing nodes accessible. Canon’s resolution for chip manufacturing seems to supply related capabilities to its opponents however does so with considerably decrease energy consumption, due to its utilization of nanoimprint know-how.
Not like conventional photolithography programs, nanoimprint lithography (NIL) doesn’t depend on an optical mechanism to switch a circuit sample onto the resist-coated wafer. Canon’s NIL equipment achieves the identical end result by urgent a masks imprinted with the circuit sample onto the wafer’s resist, primarily appearing like a stamp, as described by the corporate.
The FPA-1200NZ2C can deal with patterning workloads with a minimal linewidth of 14 nm, a functionality that Canon states is corresponding to the 5nm manufacturing node vital for producing at this time’s “most superior logic semiconductors.” Canon anticipates that, with continued enhancements in masks know-how, the NIL method is poised to achieve a minimal linewidth of 10 nm (equal to a 2nm node).
The brand new FPA-1200NZ2C machine can be outfitted with progressive environmental management know-how designed to attenuate wonderful particle contamination. Because it does not require a “particular” mild supply like excessive ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, Canon’s NIL resolution is notably energy-efficient and may considerably scale back energy consumption, thereby contributing to CO2 discount.
The FPA-1200NZ2C is able to manufacturing complicated semiconductor circuits with an rising variety of defect-free layers, due to the aforementioned wonderful particle management know-how. Canon states that this equipment could be utilized for a variety of purposes, together with metalenses for prolonged actuality (XR) gadgets with microstructures within the tens of nanometers, in addition to logic circuits in CPUs and varied different semiconductor gadgets.
Nanoimprint lithography is a way that has been in existence for over 20 years, as famous by Pranay Kotasthane, the chairperson of the Takshashila Establishment, in an interview with CNBC. Nevertheless, the know-how failed to achieve important traction, primarily as a result of excessive ultraviolet (EUV) machines produced by the Dutch firm ASML delivered superior outcomes for extremely subtle chip merchandise. Canon, which has been creating its NIL know-how since 2004, is now banking on the concept this “cheaper” resolution is “ok” for producing superior microchips independently.
