Enhanced chip performance and miniaturization in the semiconductor industry are driven by improved lithographic capabilities, such as those of lithography systems with larger Numerical Aperture (NA). The emerging high NA Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) lithography scanners increase the NA from 0.33 to 0.55, enabling continued shrink down to 8 nm halfpitch for lines/spaces. EUV systems with NA ≥ 0.75 (hyper NA) are being explored to support further cost -effective increases in device density. Our study demonstrates that hyper NA enables pattern shrink in advanced logic node designs projected in semiconductor roadmaps beyond year 2030.
Bottiglieri et al. (Tue,) studied this question.