EU Helps Develop MAGIC - Maskless Lithography For IC Manufacturing

Special applications which are unique in their own accord are usually made separately due to unavailability of specific components in market. This is more evident in the electronic industries and more over in Europe where innovation is a common process. The development of new electronic products is often hindered because of rising prices of microelectronic chips. The present day Semiconductor Lithography techniques are so costly that small scale manufacturers developing small applications are unable to afford it. To tackle this, #-Link-Snipped-#

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Image Credit: IMS Chips

Maskless Lithography for IC manufacturing or MAGIC is an EU initiative. It emphasizes on microchip printing technologies which try to eliminate the use of masks. Maskless Lithography i.e. ML2 technique is based on using multiple beams in printing the microchips. In this a large electron beam which is set to be projected on circuit board is made to pass through a small aperture. The aperture then splits the beam into number of smaller beams. Some of these beams are deflected while the others help you do the desired printing.

ML2 technique is different from the conventional mask based optical Lithography which depends on templates to create the printing pattern. Even after being effective and tested method, it is expensive and hence unsuitable for small scale manufacturers. This is also in accordance to the #-Link-Snipped-# by replacing the traditionally used surface mounted devices.

Practically speaking, there are also some problems associated with the maskless Lithography. One of it is the increasing complexity with the application. The other is the compatibility of other devices to work with the new type of microchips. For this it will be wise to research on the multiple beam technique rather than creating whole infrastructure to support the microchip.

The chips so formed will find wide applications with the small scale manufacturers providing technical solutions. However even the large scale producers like INTEL and AMD will also try to experiment its compatibility with mass production. MAGIC aims to bring the new Lithography technique in practice in coming years. As of now, the area of its use is only limited to the two partners; Netherlands-based #-Link-Snipped-# and Austria's Home - IMS Nanofabrication GmbH. Soon, the initiative will usher an economical practice in electronics industry.