In its Applications business line, ASML works on the essential ingredients for its holistic lithography approach. A completely different animal from wafer scanner development in terms of its methods, technologies, tools and culture, says software manager Maurice du Mée. ‘When I started at Applications two and half years back, I had the same feeling as when I joined ASML twenty years ago.’
‘If we want to keep following Moore’s Law, we’re going to have to do more and more correction outside the machine,’ Maurice du Mée says, quoting his technology boss, Martin van den Brink. In ASML’s Applications business line, Du Mée is responsible for the software running on the systems that perform that outside-the-machine correction. ‘That software can help us shave off a whole lot of nanometres.’
The litho machine is no longer an independent entity, but rather part of a larger whole. To facilitate this holistic lithography, ASML offers a growing package of options on its wafer scanners. The main ingredients are the simulation software designed by the company’s Silicon Valley office, formerly Brion, and three products made in Veldhoven: the Yieldstar metrology system, the Baseliner solution for scanner stability and the Litho Insight application for advanced correction calculations. This trio is the work of Applications.
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