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> "I had hope for e-beam lithography, which works fine and has been able to get down to similar resolutions for years, but is just too slow for production. No m
by ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "I had hope for e-beam lithography, which works fine and has been able to get down to similar resolutions for years, but is just too slow for production. No masks, just writing the wafer with a scanning beam under computer control. Writing is one pixel at a time, which is why it's slow."
Couldn't this process be sped up by multiplying the number of scanning beams in operation at any one time?
- Cerium 10y agoThat would essentially mean more machines, so you are not reducing the (cap expense)/(time per unit) equation. Additionally electron beam optics are magnets, so driving multiple beams in the same space would be complex.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago> "Additionally electron beam optics are magnets, so driving multiple beams in the same space would be complex." Could you not use a Halbach array? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbach_array https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbach_array Furthermore, I had in mind that you'd have synchronisation between the beams. Consider the use case of one e-beam per chip. As each wafer has multiple chips you would still have plenty of room for parallel beams working at any one time. As for cost, do you have a ballpark figure for how much the devices cost?