Manufacturing with DUV lithography

Deep-UV (DUV) lithography has been developed to scale minimum feature sizes of devices on semiconductor chips to sub-half-micron dimensions. This paper reviews early manufacturing experiences at the IBM Microelectronics Division with deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography at a 248-nm wavelength. Critical steps in the processing of 1Mb DRAM, 16Mb DRAM, and logic gate conductors in devices are discussed. The evolution of DUV lithography tools is also briefly reviewed.