At TNO, research and developments in optics, sensors and EUV are spinning off knowledge into multiple markets. The research institute is also building an EUV facility where players in the semiconductor industry can test their recipes and materials for future nanometre nodes.
In 1998, ASML called upon TNO to help develop expertise in exposing chips using extreme ultraviolet radiation. The move made sense: thanks to the technology’s vacuum requirement, the conditions for EUV chip lithography are a good match for aerospace instrumentation – one of the research institute’s core competencies. For the past fifteen years, the group in Delft has also been working with Carl Zeiss to keep the mirrors for EUV optics clean. And since 2005 the South Holland city has been home to an EUV test system. In recent years this demanding discipline has generated such a wealth of knowledge that TNO is now tutoring organizations like ESA on topics such as contamination control.
In this kind of research and development process, TNO usually takes a pioneering role. ‘We’re more involved in revolutions than evolutions,’ says Rogier Verberk, TNO’s director of semiconductor equipment. For the first experimental EUV alpha tool, his team created roughly fifteen modules, ranging from sensors through electrostatic clamps for EUV masks to systems for contamination control and reticle handling.
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