Visions

Constantly increasing lithography performance requirements and an ever growing system complexity are the most demanding aspects of the companys business. The Vistec Electron Beam GmbH is ready and prepared to face these challenges with qualified, specialized and highly motivated employees. With core competencies in electron optics, mechanical and electronics engineering, sophisticated software solutions and with broad experiences gathered over a long time, Vistec supports tomorrows competitive edge technology of its customers.

In Electron Beam Lithography throughput is always an issue. With higher technology nodes it becomes more and more critical. The e-beam specific bottleneck of low patterning speed using one single electron beam can be overcome by using multiple electron beams in parallel.

Vistec Electron Beam GmbH is pursuing an evolutionary approach called Multi Shaped Beam (MSB). The MSB technology constitutes a logical continuation of the mature single Variable Shaped Beam (VSB) technology, well established in decades of industrial application. Since more than 100 pixels are projected with a single VSB shape, a multi shaped beam shot represents thousands of pixels exposed at once.

Many field proven tool components as well as the required process infrastructure from 50kV single VSB technology can be reused either without or with little modification.

Compared to existing multi e-beam concepts the MSB approach differentiates itself through  reduced technical risks based on existing and mature single shaped beam solutions, understanding of complex systems concerning integration of all components into a production worthy  tool including beam generation and control, data preparation and data path, advanced positioning and material handling platform technology as well as automated operation.

Overall, this strategy allows for reduced development time on manageable technical risk level compared to all the other proposed multi-beam approaches.