Canon challenges ASML supremacy in chip manufacturing with a new nanoimprint lithography device

Forward-searching: Canon is renowned for its printers, cameras, and other imaging merchandise designed for both purchaser and industrial use. The Japanese enterprise is now making use of its huge know-how in optical and imaging technology to undertaking into the tremendously specialized discipline of advanced chip production gadget.

Canon these days brought the FPA-1200NZ2C, a chunk of "nanoimprint semiconductor production" gadget mainly designed for generating microchips and different semiconductor-primarily based components using the today's manufacturing nodes available. Canon's solution for chip production seems to offer comparable abilities to its competition however does so with significantly lower power consumption, way to its utilization of nanoimprint generation.

Unlike traditional photolithography structures, nanoimprint lithography (NIL) does no longer depend on an optical mechanism to transfer a circuit pattern onto the withstand-coated wafer. Canon's NIL machinery achieves the equal outcome by using pressing a mask imprinted with the circuit sample onto the wafer's resist, basically performing like a stamp, as defined through the organization.

The FPA-1200NZ2C can take care of patterning workloads with a minimal linewidth of 14 nm, a capability that Canon states is comparable to the 5nm manufacturing node important for producing modern "most superior common sense semiconductors." Canon anticipates that, with persevered upgrades in mask technology, the NIL approach is poised to attain a minimum linewidth of 10 nm (equivalent to a 2nm node).

The new FPA-1200NZ2C device is likewise ready with progressive environmental manage technology designed to minimize fine particle contamination. Since it would not require a "unique" light source like excessive ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, Canon's NIL answer is appreciably strength-green and may drastically reduce energy consumption, thereby contributing to CO2 discount.

The FPA-1200NZ2C is capable of production complicated semiconductor circuits with more and more disorder-free layers, thanks to the aforementioned satisfactory particle manage generation. Canon states that this equipment may be applied for a wide variety of packages, which includes metalenses for extended reality (XR) devices with microstructures in the tens of nanometers, in addition to logic circuits in CPUs and diverse other semiconductor devices.

Nanoimprint lithography is a technique that has been in life for over two decades, as mentioned via Pranay Kotasthane, the chairperson of the Takshashila Institution, in an interview with CNBC. However, the generation failed to advantage large traction, primarily because intense ultraviolet (EUV) machines produced by way of the Dutch corporation ASML brought advanced results for surprisingly sophisticated chip products. Canon, which has been growing its NIL era considering that 2004, is now banking on the concept that this "inexpensive" answer is "exact enough" for producing advanced microchips independently.