Dear Reader,
The earthquake in Japan has had a devastating impact on the country, and our deepest sympathies are with those suffering from this disaster. While some of our group companies’ manufacturing facilities were directly affected, we have made great recovery progress and all sites have been restored to production. We sincerely appreciate your support during this time, as well as your kind wishes for the safety and well being of our employees. While unthinkable, events such as this highlight the strength of the partnerships and relationships across our industry.
This strong sense of industry partnership and collaboration was evidenced at the 8
As validation of unfailing commitment to our customers and industry partners, Nikon is also pleased to once again be recognized by Intel as a Preferred Quality Supplier, our sixth award win in this prestigious evaluation. Nikon places great value on your input regarding how we can continue to improve our products, programs and services. We invite you to respond to the Nikon eReview (npicom@nikon.com) with your comments or suggestions.
At the 2011 LithoVision symposium earlier this year, Dr. Moshe Preil, Manager of Emerging Lithography and Tools at GLOBALFOUNDRIES, discussed the added process challenges for foundries and highlighted the need for tool flexibility and OPE matching capabilities. Nikon experts then reported on key imaging advancements in these areas to enable the lithography roadmap.
Sam Sivakumar, Intel Corporation Fellow and Director of Lithography, and Yuichi Shibazaki, Nikon GM and Technical Director, report on 32 nm production progress and the latest data from the NSR-S620D immersion scanner. In light of EUV delays, solutions for ArFi extension and patterning capabilities to the 10 nm node were also discussed.
Hidetami Yaegashi, Senior Manager at Tokyo Electron Limited, and Dr. Gandharv Bhatara, Mentor Graphics Product Marketing Manager, spoke about Optical Lithography Extensions at the recent LithoVision technical symposium. Advanced double/multi-patterning strategies and the associated challenges for computational lithography were highlighted in their insightful presentations.
Katsuhiko Murakami, Nikon EUVL Development Group Leader, and Dr. Yashesh Shroff, Senior Engineer, of Intel reported on EUVL Challenges for High Volume Manufacturing and provided updates on the EUV1 system evaluation during the Nikon symposium held earlier this year.
Mask fabrication challenges and costs continue to increase, and are heightened by the adoption of double patterning techniques due to the additional masks and stringent requirements. To alleviate these mask challenges, Hoya Corporation has developed a new Advanced Binary Film (ABF) to provide better durability against cleaning and ArF irradiation effects in order to enhance mask performance and lifetime.
ArFi extension to 22 nm and beyond will require enhanced process control capabilities to decrease CD uniformity errors. At SPIE, Nikon System Engineer, Tomoharu Fujiwara, discussed how CDU Master optimizes performance by adjusting dose and focus intrafield and across wafer to compensate for process errors, and showed that this solution has improved CDU by more than 60%.
Nikon recently received the prestigious Preferred Quality Supplier (PQS) award from Intel Corporation for our performance in 2010. Nikon was recognized for the significant contributions involved in providing Intel with lithography scanners that are deemed essential to Intel's success.
The earthquake in Japan has had a devastating impact on the country. Our deepest sympathies are with those suffering from this disaster, and our thoughts are with colleagues and industry partners as they work towards recovery. In response to this tragedy, and to extend immediate support to the victims and the affected area, Nikon Corporation has made a cash donation of 100 million yen to the Japanese Red Cross Society. In addition, Nikon has donated 1,000 compact digital cameras with memory cards and 200 sets of binoculars to public organizations in support of the various restoration activities in the affected areas.
There was a definite feeling of cautious optimism across the industry at SPIE Advanced Lithography this year, and attendance at the conference and surrounding events attested to the positive outlook. Nikon achieved record attendance at the LithoVision 2011 technical symposium, hosting 450 customers and industry partners at the 8