EUVL — Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography: Laying the Foundations for Microchips of the Next Decade

Do you remember your first cell phone? And what you could do with it? Exactly: make phone calls. It has only been 10 years. And today? Cell phones have mutated into multifunction devices: now you can make phone calls, send text messages, take and send pictures, surf the Internet, listen to MP3s, play games, navigate and even watch movies. Essentially, cell phones tell the success story of the chip industry like no other technical instrument: even more power in an even smaller space at — comparably — even lower prices. It is the increasing power of microchips that influence the development of cell phones. Optical lithography is a key driver of this success story. In many aspects it is playing a key role in the manufacture of semiconductors. After all, every microchip is produced using the lithography process. Depending on its complexity, it must undergo this process several dozen times. At the same time, it is primarily the advances in optical lithography that enable the continuously rising integration density of microchips. Mammoth efforts are allowing the semiconductor industry and its suppliers to introduce a new technology today, EUV lithography (EUVL), which will continue to drive progress over the next decade through miniaturization. This article deals with the perspectives of EUVL and the challenges of the technology, and reviews its development.