TSMC to Adopt Extreme Ultraviolet at 5nm

Alan Patterson, EETimes
7/14/2016 11:10 AM EDT

TAIPEI—Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s largest foundry, said it will fully implement extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography to make 5nm chips by the end of this decade.

“We estimate that EUV will be a cost-effective tool for high-volume manufacturing by 2020, in time for our 5nm ramp,” TSMC Co-CEO Mark Liu said at an event to announce the company’s second-quarter results. “We plan to use EUV lithography extensively in 5nm to improve density, simplify process complexity and reduce cost.”

The company said it has been using 7nm as a development vehicle for EUV, achieving what it called good integration of EUV scanners, masks and photoresist. TSMC said it is running four state-of-the-art EUV scanners for infrastructure development and will move in another two NXE:3400 EUV production tools from ASML in the first quarter of 2017.

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