Canon has shipped its first nanoprint lithography machine to the Texas Institute for Electronics (TIE).
First announced by the company in October 2023, Canon has touted its machine - dubbed FPA-1200NZ2C - as a low-cost alternative to ASML’s ultraviolet (EUV) and deep ultraviolet (DUV) photolithography technology.
Although Canon has not made the price of the machines public, when the company first unveiled the technology, CEO Fujio Mitarai said the price would be “one digit less than ASML’s EUVs.” The latest version of Netherlands-based AMSL’s High Numerical Aperture NA Extreme Ultraviolet (High NA EUV) machines currently retail for approximately $370 million.
The lower price point of Canon’s nanoprint machines could potentially allow smaller manufacturers to make leading-edge semiconductors.
Unlike conventional photolithography equipment, which transfers a circuit pattern by projecting it onto the resist-coated wafer, Canon’s new technology will instead press a mask imprinted with the circuit pattern on the resist coated wafer like a stamp. The company has also removed the need for an optical mechanism, found in the traditional manufacturing process, thus reducing the machine’s cost of ownership.
The company has said its machine is capable of producing parts down to a 5nm node, and could eventually produce 2nm nodes once the technology has been refined even further.
The Texas Institute for Electronics is a University of Texas at Austin-supported semiconductor consortium that includes AMD, Applied Materials, Intel, and Micron.
On its website, TIE says it aims to “provide technology leadership, build critical research and manufacturing infrastructure, and establish workforce development efforts that are essential to strategic long-term success for both the commercial and defense sectors of the US semiconductor industry.”
