Getting 300mm Right the First Time - Technology Information

The semiconductor industry is in the midst of its single most expensive advancementathe shift to 300mm wafers. Analysts are forecasting that chipmakers will spend more than $8 billion on 300mm wafer processing equipment this year alone. The industry's overall investment in this new wafer size is already astronomical and growing steadily. With the cost of a new 300mm fab running in the $2 billion to $3 billion range, both the companies building them, and the industry as a whole, cannot afford mistakes.

This is particularly true for providers of lithography equipment. Many of these 300mm fabs will be built using 248-nanometer deep ultraviolet and 365nm i-line lithography, eventually transitioning to 193nm and then to 157nm lithography. Semiconductor companies do not want to re-introduce completely new lithography platforms to their 300mm fabs at each one of these nodes. Therefore, it is essential that the 300mm lithography equipment installed in these fabs be extendable over these generations of optical lithography. The economics of 300mm demand that lithography providers get 300mm right the first timeaeven if this requires revolutionary innovations.

Right now, the semiconductor market is red-hot and figures to get even hotter. A tight DRAM market and increasing demand for wireless communications and connectivity applications in the consumer market have resulted in strong growth forecasts for the industry. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported record chip sales of $15.2 billion for the month of April. According to Dataquest, a division of market research firm GartnerGroup Inc., semiconductor industry revenue should top $220 billion this year, reaching to $320 billion by 2004.