On October 26th, the 7th International Workshop on Advanced Photolithography (IWAPS) successfully concluded in Lishui, Zhejiang Province. The conference was hosted by the China Integrated Circuit Innovation Alliance and the Chinese Optical Society, and organized by the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Lishui Economic and Technological Development Zone Management Committee (Zhejiang Lishui's "Ten Thousand Mu, Hundred Billion" New Semiconductor Industry Platform). Co-organizers included Zhejiang Fuzhe Capital Management Co., Ltd., Guangdong Greater Bay Area Integrated Circuit and System Application Research Institute, and Nanjing Chengxin Integrated Circuit Technology Research Institute. The conference was sponsored by domestic and international companies including SIEMENS, EDWARDS, JSR, Xuzhou Bokang, Quanxin Zhizao, Shenyang Xinyuan, SMEE, Xiamen Hengkun, KEMPUR, Oriental Crystal Source, ZEISS, Cymer, PIBOND, Fujifilm, and 3M. Hundreds of technical experts and scholars from numerous companies, research institutions, and universities from China, the United States, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, and other parts of the world participated in the conference.
The conference was chaired by the Secretary-General of the Organizing Committee, SPIE Fellow, Researcher at the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Professor at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Researcher Wei Yay. Speeches were given by the Conference Chairman, Researcher Cao Jianlin, Chairman of the China Integrated Circuit Innovation Alliance; Conference Chairman, Researcher Ye Tianchun, Researcher at the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of the China Integrated Circuit Innovation Alliance; Professor Liu Xu, Secretary-General of the Chinese Optical Society, COS & OSA & SPIE Fellow, Professor at Zhejiang University, and Director of the State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instruments; Mr. Lou Zhijian, Member of the Standing Committee of the Lishui Municipal Committee of the CPC and Executive Vice Mayor; Mr. Liu Zhiwei, Member of the Party Group of the Lishui Municipal People's Government, Secretary of the Party Working Committee and Chairman of the Management Committee of the Lishui Economic and Technological Development Zone; and Mr. Li Xuwu, Chairman of the Program Committee and Advisor. Mr. Wang Gongyu, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and General Manager of Zhejiang Provincial State-owned Capital Operation Co., Ltd., also attended the conference. According to the conference schedule, over the past two days, guests from dozens of institutions including PSI, AMEC, Oriental Crystal Source, Huahong Grace, SIEMENS, Fudan University, Zhejiang University, Cymer, Fujifilm, JSR, HIT, KingSemi, Allchip Manufacturing, and HFC delivered technical reports on their respective topics, providing in-depth analysis of the latest technological advancements and solutions in the field of lithography. The presentations covered a wide range of topics, including computational lithography, DTCO, EUV, process technology, metrology, deep learning, equipment, materials, and new lithography technologies.
Conference Chairman, Cao Jianlin, Chairman of the China Integrated Circuit Innovation Alliance, delivered a speech.
Conference Chairman, Ye Tianchun, Researcher at the Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of the China Integrated Circuit Innovation Alliance, delivered a speech.
Liu Xu, Secretary-General of the Chinese Optical Society, Fellow of COS, OSA & SPIE, Professor at Zhejiang University, and Director of the State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instruments, delivered a speech.
Lou Zhijian, Member of the Standing Committee of the Lishui Municipal Committee of the CPC and Executive Vice Mayor of Lishui, delivered a speech.
Liu Zhiwei, Member of the Party Group of the Lishui Municipal People's Government, Secretary of the Party Working Committee and Chairman of the Management Committee of the Lishui Economic and Technological Development Zone, delivered a speech.
Wei Yay, Secretary-General of the Organizing Committee, SPIE Fellow, Researcher at the Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Professor at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, presided over the opening ceremony.
In recent years, China's integrated circuit industry has flourished, and the International Workshop on Advanced Photolithography Systems (IWAPS) has emerged in this context. IWAPS provides a platform for technical exchange for senior technical experts and outstanding researchers from the domestic and international semiconductor industry and academia. Participants can share their research results on topics such as materials, equipment, processes, measurement, computational lithography, and design optimization, discuss patterning solutions, and explore upcoming technical challenges. As a high-end international lithography technology workshop, its speakers are all invited senior experts from domestic and international lithography and related fields, representing the internationally advanced level in their respective fields. The reports cover a wide range of topics, including the current technological status, future development trends, and challenges. The workshop aims to provide participants with an interactive platform for in-depth discussion and to offer more opportunities for researchers and engineers who want to learn more about the dynamics of the domestic and international semiconductor industry.
IWAPS has been held for six consecutive years, and this year marks its seventh edition, held in Lishui, Zhejiang. The semiconductor industry is characterized by high technical difficulty, long research and development cycles, high investment costs, and a reliance on highly skilled personnel and advanced R&D methods, resulting in a very high technological barrier. However, Lishui, a small city in Zhejiang province, has quietly become a rising star in China's semiconductor industry in recent years. This raises the question: how did Lishui develop this globally challenging industry so successfully in such a short time?
It turns out that in recent years, Lishui City has actively sought innovation and transformation, making the cultivation and development of the semiconductor industry a key measure to change its industrial structure and foster new growth drivers. With the Economic Development Zone as its main base, and focusing on cultivating new industry players and attracting leading enterprises, Lishui has concentrated on integrated circuit materials and power devices. Through the introduction of 31 projects, including Juexin Microelectronics, Zhongxin Crystal, and Fulade Semiconductor, with a total investment exceeding 60 billion yuan, it has successfully been included in the provincial "Ten Thousand Mu, Hundred Billion Yuan" new industry platform cultivation list, forming a complete industrial chain encompassing "chip materials, equipment, design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, and applications."
Through careful planning and rapid development, Lishui's semiconductor industry has successfully achieved a leap from nothing to something, and from small to large, providing a valuable "Lishui model" for the semiconductor industry in the province and even the entire country.
The co-organizer of this conference, Zhejiang Fuzhe Capital Management Co., Ltd., is a provincial-level industrial investment platform under Zhejiang Provincial State-owned Capital Operation Co., Ltd. It focuses on strategic emerging industries such as integrated circuits, and has invested in key technologies and core components projects in the integrated circuit field, including SMIC Integrated (688469), Zhongxin Crystal, Changfei Advanced, Jiangfeng Electronics, Tongchuang Purun, and Zhongsili Electronics, contributing to the high-quality development of the integrated circuit industry.
This conference combines the current development status of lithography technology at home and abroad, predicts development trends from a professional perspective, and assists in the development of the integrated circuit industry. It will also provide broader development ideas for Lishui's integrated circuit industry, promoting faster and better improvements.
The following is an excerpt from the report:
Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is a leading technology in semiconductor manufacturing. Its main advantage lies in its short wavelength, which enables high-resolution patterning for future technology nodes. However, challenges remain in mask and wafer metrology as scaling continues. Lensless imaging (i.e., coherent diffraction imaging (CDI)) is an effective alternative to traditional imaging techniques. In a recent example, we applied EUV CDI to multilayer-coated EUV masks, revealing its superior capability in detecting absorbers and phase defects as small as 20 nanometers. A significant advantage of the lensless approach lies in its inherent flexibility, allowing for manipulation of wavelength and incident angle, further enhancing imaging capabilities. Furthermore, these methods can simultaneously utilize different metrology techniques, such as scatterometry and reflectometry. We have invented a novel wafer metrology tool that enables non-destructive measurements at the nanoscale, applicable to a wide range of structures and materials. In summary, extreme ultraviolet light not only facilitates the creation of smaller features in lithography but also provides an effective metrology method required to characterize and analyze these complex features in future technology nodes. The combination of lensless imaging and extreme ultraviolet tools holds immense promise for advancing the metrology needed for semiconductor manufacturing.
After 19 years of continuous innovation and effort, AMEC has become a leading high-end semiconductor equipment company in China. AMEC has developed a variety of CCP (capacitively coupled plasma) and ICP (inductively coupled plasma) etching machines, covering most etching application areas. AMEC offers single-station and dual-station process chambers to pursue excellent process performance and significantly reduce costs. AMEC's innovations will continue to drive technological development in the More Moore and More than More application fields.
The essence of DTCO is to achieve collaborative optimization between design and manufacturing, allowing both sides to leverage their respective strengths to seek a more optimized overall result. Oriental Crystal Source's HPOTM aims to establish a platform and key engine that enables the ultimate DTCO solution by establishing bidirectional data exchange between design and manufacturing, allowing Fabless companies to gain more visibility into the Fab, while enabling the chip manufacturing process to systematically consider the designer's intentions, ultimately improving overall efficiency and yield. In this presentation, we will introduce Oriental Crystal Source's latest practices in integrating Place & Route and OPC tools with the help of artificial intelligence, leveraging the advantages of both to improve design manufacturability and chip performance. We will also demonstrate how the HPOTM platform provides the industry with more competitive solutions to build a better process from designer intent to good chips (G2GC).
In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI), primarily driven by deep neural networks, has developed rapidly, especially the generative AI boom at the end of 2023, which continues to this day. As a pioneer in the high-tech industry, the chip manufacturing industry, especially wafer foundries, has shown great interest in applying artificial intelligence to daily R&D and large-scale production.
In fact, starting 10 years ago, as Moore's Law was pushed to its limits, traditional data analysis and process control methods could no longer meet the needs of our advanced integrated circuit R&D and manufacturing. HuaLi's AMTD (Advanced Module Development Department) also introduced big data and machine learning methods for data analysis automation to improve work efficiency, which we call AI-assisted. However, with the emergence of generative models and the explosive growth of GPU computing power, the advanced chip manufacturing industry has also ushered in an opportunity for a paradigm shift in process optimization and yield improvement. Based on its experience in big data and machine learning, HuaLi AMTD has pioneered various attempts and explorations in computer-generated image transformation (which we call AI-driven applications), and has achieved some encouraging results.
In this presentation, I will review the development of artificial intelligence in the field of chip manufacturing, analyze the similarities and differences between this generative model and traditional artificial intelligence methods, and their impact on the chip industry. I will also explain how we are migrating from AI-assisted to AI-driven. Combining HuaLi AMTD's application of generative models in artificial intelligence applications, we will also discuss possible directions and challenges for the application of generative models in the chip industry.
The process of modern semiconductor technology nodes from design to manufacturing begins with Design Technology Co-Optimization (DTCO). The DTCO process usually makes appropriate assumptions about the design and process, but the applicability of these assumptions changes dramatically during the actual process development phase. The various modules after DTCO, such as design, layout relocation, auxiliary graphic insertion, optical proximity correction (OPC), mask proximity correction (MPC), mask fabrication, and wafer processing, address systemic problems in a categorized manner. To prevent the propagation of systemic defects, standard in-module verification mechanisms are required, such as DRC sign-off to ensure the correctness of the physical design, OPC verification to ensure the correctness of OPC results, metrology and inspection to ensure the correctness of the process, and physical failure analysis to ensure the correctness of typical analyses. When critical failures of the circuit fault type occur, information exchange between modules and collaborative optimization of modules are performed. In addition, advanced nodes utilize mature technologies such as Design for Manufacturability (DFM) and Lithography-Friendly Design (LFD) to facilitate better process design feedback. However, the strong and complex interaction between design and process in advanced technology nodes presents entirely new challenges. Therefore, fabless companies and foundries are actively promoting the establishment of a systematic information exchange and analysis platform that should cover all modules from design to manufacturing and provide complete technical support. Meanwhile, the industry is also extensively deploying machine learning technologies. This lecture will introduce machine learning methods and extend the collaborative optimization lifecycle of design technologies.
