Multibeam Systems Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, is financed by venture capital and supported by NIST and SEMATECH. The company has developed innovative e-beam technologies for multi-beam columns – the “e-beam engines” – for the lithography market.

The engine is a one-block array of a small number, from 10 to 100, of columns (or beams). The columns are all-electrostatic, permitting small column footprint and fast vector writing, each being independently controlled and functioning, with its own TFE source.

The engine architecture is optimized for specific applications, from high-volume lithography to “low volume” lithography to mask making. Depending on the applications, the e-beam is shaped and with enhanced current to drastically reduce write-time and increase throughput.

For cutting-edge fabs, lithography solution at the 22nm node is wanting. The critical layers, which include contacts, early vias, and gates, are especially difficult and expensive for immersion DUV lithography. Our e-beam engine, designed with proprietary technology to bring down flash time and overhead, is capable of printing the critical layers at high speed for sub-32nm nodes. Furthermore, clustering two or more column arrays in a lithography system would provide throughput levels compatible with fab workflows at competitive cost.

“Low volume” lithography covers applications that print small numbers of wafers per mask set. These applications include most ASICs and military ICs, plus developing designs and certain new products. These columns employ designs different from those for high throughput applications but share similar multi-column architecture. E-beam maskless tools, we believe, would greatly reinvigorate new ICs coming to market and address unmet customer needs.

E-beam systems have been for decades the industry’s workhorse for making masks. As feature size shrinks and masks get more complicated, today’s single-beam mask writing system is proving to be too slow. Our e-beam engine, with 4 to 16 beams, can significantly speed up mask production and reduce mask cost.

The technology and IP are also applicable to wafer inspection and LCD testing, although the company is currently focused on lithography applications.