Researchers develop new chip-making technique

1. Scientists have developed a proof-of-concept approach for extending current chip-making techniques so that manufacturers can produce semiconductors with smaller feature sizes without spending millions of dollars to radically retool their fabrication plants to accommodate different techniques.

2. IBM and JSR Micro, which supplies custom materials for the semiconductor- and electronic-device-fabrication industries, developed the new technique. It uses advanced lenses and new materials to create chips with feature sizes of 29.9 nanometers and, eventually, even smaller. Current microprocessors generally have 90-nm feature sizes. Smaller feature sizes would let manufacturers pack more transistors onto chips, thereby increasing their power without making them larger.

3. The new approach would extend the current techniques of using argon-fluoride lasers, as well as deep ultraviolet and high-index X immersion lithographies, to produce circuitry patterns on the photoresist that sits on the silicon.

4. Immersion lithography typically uses water, which has a 1.43 refracting index. The refracting index measures how much a light wave slows when passing through a liquid or lens. Light passing through a high-index material has a shorter wavelength, which lithography can tightly focus, thereby yielding finer feature sizes. Thus, the argon-fluoride laser, which has a 193-nm wavelength, can generate small feature patterns by passing through a lens and a liquid before reaching the photoresist. Using different liquids and lens materials could increase the overall refractive index, which would enable smaller feature sizes using today's lithography techniques, explained Mark Slezak, technical manager of JSR Micro's lithography group.

5. For the new approach, JSR supplied an organic liquid, which they declined to identify, that has a 1.64 refractive index. In addition, IBM used higher-density quartz lenses with a refractive index of 1.67, up from current lenses' 1.56. "This shows that several more generations of immersion lithography are possible," said Bob Allen, manager of lithography materials for IBM's Almaden Research Center.

6. Chip experts had predicted that present lithography approaches working with current materials— which create microprocessors with 110-, 90-, and 65-nm features – would be unable to draw circuit patterns less than 40-nm, requiring a shift to far different techniques.

7. Aaron J. Hand, managing editor of Semiconductor International magazine, said the new manufacturing technique would still require chipmakers to make some changes to their fabrication plants and buy new tools. The technique's success will thus depend on how costly it turns out to be and whether IBM and JSR can make it work as more than just a proof-of-concept approach, Hand noted. In perhaps six or seven years, he continued, manufacturers will still have to move to next-generation techniques, such as extreme UV lithography, that would require extensive and expensive retrofitting of fabs.

V. Read the first sentence of paragraph 1 and mark pauses. Divide it into sense groups, find out the means of connection between these sense groups and between the words in each group.

VI. In paragraphs 2-3 find English equivalents of the following words and word combinations:снабжать; технология; рисунки схем; усовершенствованный; создавать; позволять; современный; мощность; собирать; подход; кремний; размер элемента.

VII. Read paragraphs 4-5 and answer the questions.

VIII. Read paragraphs 5 and 6 and say what chip experts had predicted towards lithography.

IX. Say whether the following statements are true or false.