Direct write lithography: the global solution for R&D and manufacturing

The electron beam lithography is a well known and mature solution, widely installed in research laboratories and Universities, to provide advanced patterning for research and development programs for a large field of applications. However, limited by its low throughput capabilities, the direct write solution never appeared as a credible option for manufacturing purposes. Nevertheless, semiconductor business starts to be affected by the increasing cost of the optical lithography requesting more and more complex masks and projection systems. This trend opens opportunities for high throughput mask less equipments to address ASIC manufacturing. A review of the Maskless Lithography (ML2) technology is presented in this article, including process integration capability, application fields and perspective for high throughput ML2 solution.