Microlithography & Mask Making - Development of

Summary : There are two essential applications for semiconductor lithography equipment. They are lumped together here under the name 'microlithography and mask making'. The two segments consist of mask-making equipment and wafer patterning equipment. Both have a common origin in the early step-and-repeat cameras which were used to manufacture masks which were, in turn, used to selectively expose photoresist coatings deposited on the surface of a semiconductor wafer.

Click here to view full screen

Annexure :

Microlithography equipment has historically been characterized as being the queen of the clean room. Wafer exposure equipment has, by far, the most stringent precision requirements of all-generally needing to resolve lines and spaces below one micron in width. These must often be overlaid thorough twelve or more layers-requiring alignment accuracies of better than 0.15 microns across a six or an eight inch wafer. This is about the equivalent of getting a hole-in-one from an eighteen mile drive. Such requirements for precision have stimulated a high degree of automation in microlithography equipment.

You may like this also:

Images in Semiconductor ...

16 Jun 2008

Key events drawn from archived documents in VLSI's library. These documents have been carefully selected for their historical significance. ... See more

Customer Satisfaction L ...

15 Jun 2018

VLSI's Customer Satisfaction Survey Celebrates 30 Years of award winning semiconductor equipment companies. A Look Back... 2018 marked the 30th year VLSIresearch has released its annual Customer Satisfaction ... See more

Semiconductor Depositio ...

Lithography has long been regarded as the queen of wafer fabrication in the drive towards submicron geometries. But, in recent years problems with depth-of-focus and materials have limited lithography's ability ... See more

When the death of Moore ...

15 Jan 1996

Crashing into Moore's Wall is like a conspiracy theory: it can never be disproved to the true believers that our industry is about to run into a wall that has never appeared. Back in the mid-nineties, Scientifi ... See more

Introduction to Wafer F ...

Wafer fabrication equipment consists of all those types of equipment used in making and processing raw wafers in forming the finished chips-whether they be discretes or integrated circuits. This segment also in ... See more

Semiconductor Diffusion ...

There are three market segments of the diffusion/oxidation equipment industry. They are diffusion, high pressure oxidation and rapid thermal processing, as depicted in Figure 4.4.0-1. ... See more

Paradigms of Maskless L ...

The replacement of optical lithography with e-beam direct write for semiconductor manufacturing has been predicted since Gordon Moore penned his 1965 paper, writing "It is worth noting that this density of comp ... See more

Transistors to Integrat ...

16 Dec 1947

Transistors to Integrated Circuits: How the early semiconductor industry got from the Lab to the Fab. ... See more

Process Diagnostics - D ...

Process diagnostic equipment is critical to semiconductor manufacture. Though this equipment is not used to directly manufacture devices, it serves to verify consistent and in-control manufacturing processes. ... See more

Packaging Equipment - D ...

The early nineties, brought a renaissance to packaging due to a demand for more I/0, smaller sizes, higher power, faster speed and control of thermal properties. These demands drove the need for more sophistic ... See more

Access to and use of this Website is subject to TechInsights' Terms of Use (including Copyright Policy & Claims) and Privacy Policy. By accessing or using this Website you agree to TechInsights' Terms of Use (including Copyright Policy & Claims) and Privacy Policy.

Copyright © 2026 TechInsights Inc. All rights reserved.