Lucent, Applied Materials, ASM Lithography Announce Intent to Cooperate in Advancing SCALPEL Lithography Technology
The goal of this effort is to ultimately commercialize SCALPEL technology as a production-worthy manufacturing tool for building future generations of silicon chips. Several of the world's leading semiconductor companies also have expressed interest in supporting this effort.
Invented in 1989 by Lucent's Bell Labs, SCALPEL was recently endorsed by SEMATECH-- a research and development consortium of semiconductor manufacturers-- as a potential successor to current optical lithography methods for patterning smaller, more powerful semiconductor chips. SCALPEL technology uses an electron beam source instead of a light source to image a pattern of the chip's design.
"Bringing these two world-class equipment companies on board," said Bill Brinkman, Bell Labs Physical Sciences Research Vice President, "allows us to combine our expertise and resources to accelerate the development of SCALPEL technology into a commercially viable system. This will be a tremendous breakthrough for semiconductor manufacturers building the next generations of powerful chips."
Reducing the size of chip components makes chips faster because of the shorter distance electrical signals must travel. So far, the number of transistors packed onto a single thumb-sized silicon chip has doubled every two years.
Today, most of the semiconductor industry is producing transistors with 250 nanometer features-- roughly 400 times smaller than a human hair. However, it is generally believed that the method used to make those features-- optical lithography-- may reach its practical limits at 100 nanometers within the next few years.
"We believe that SCALPEL will allow manufacturers to surpass the limitations of optical lithography and enable the migration of chip technology to the 50-nanometer generation and beyond," Brinkman said. An electron beam has a wavelength many times shorter than that of the ultraviolet light source used in today's lithography tools and has already demonstrated capability to pattern images well below 100 nanometers.
"Lucent has done an excellent job of bringing this technology to its current state of development," said Sass Somekh, Senior Vice President, Office of the President of Applied Materials. "We believe SCALPEL to be a promising technology, and are very excited to be participating in its development. This cooperation can provide Applied Materials with an excellent opportunity to work side by side with our customers in developing manufacturing solutions that can be integrated into future semiconductor manufacturing lines."
Martin van den Brink, ASML's Vice President Technology, said, "ASML's advanced technology group is actively involved in assessing Next Generation Lithography, and we believe SCALPEL is a strong candidate for sub-100 nanometer applications. We also are pleased to be involved in this effort to further develop the SCALPEL approach, and we are eager to contribute our experience in advanced imaging systems technologies."
Several industry suppliers are working on providing the remaining two critical components of the SCALPEL technology: the mask, or pattern, through which the electrons pass; and the resist, which the electrons expose to create the desired pattern. About the Companies
Lucent Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:LU), headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, data networking systems, business telephone systems and microelectronics components. Bell Laboratories is the research and development arm for the company. For more information on Lucent Technologies, visit the company's web site at http://www.lucent.com. For more information about SCALPEL, including a technical backgrounder, refer to http://www.bell-labs.com/news/1999/january/25/1.html.
Applied Materials, Inc. is a Fortune 500 global growth company and the world's largest supplier of wafer fabrication systems and services to the global semiconductor industry. Applied Materials is traded on the Nasdaq National Market System under the symbol "AMAT." Applied Materials' web site is http://www.AppliedMaterials.com.
ASM Lithography Holding N.V. (Amsterdam Exchanges:ASML, Nasdaq:ASMLF) is the world's second largest supplier of wafer steppers and Step & Scan systems that are essential to the fabrication of modern integrated circuits. ASML's global headquarters are located in Veldhoven, The Netherlands, with U.S. headquarters in Tempe, Arizona. ASML's web site is http://www.asml.com.
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CONTACTS: Applied Materials, Santa Clara, CA.
Jeff Lettes, 408/563-5161 (editorial/media)
Carolyn Schwartz, 408/748-5227 (financial community)
or
Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, N.J.
Steve Eisenberg, 908/582-7474
or
ASM Lithography, Veldhoven, The Netherlands
Martin van den Brink, (VP Technology)
(+31) 40-230 3521
Jan Hoefnagels (Investor Relations/Corp. Comm.)
(+31) 40-230 3938
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