Development and Outlook of Extr eme Ultraviolet (EUV) Lithography Technology

Abstract

Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography has emerged as a core approach for expanding semiconductor fabrication beyond the boundaries of deep ultraviolet (DUV) patterning. Due to the ever-diminishing reduction of device size, even utilizing multiple patterning techniques does not address the basic physical issue of optical resolution of conventional 193 nm lithography. This study introduces the concepts of photolithography, the technological revolution from DUV to EUV, and the architectural characteristics of current EUV exposure systems. It addresses additional issues, which include but are not limited to limited source power, mask defects, resist stochastics, multilayer mirror contamination, and pellicle transmission loss. The current research was supplemented with industry roadmaps, and it is concluded in the paper that the future scalability of EUV lithography will be dependent on the use of highnumerical-aperture (High-NA) exposure devices, novel photoresist materials (including metal-oxide resists), and improvements to computational lithography to minimize stochasticity and improve the accuracy of the pattern. This study emphasizes the ongoing relevance of optical lithography for the scalability of semiconductor devices and sheds light on the technical directions needed in order to realise semiconductor units at sub-2 nm.