Limitless MEMS Design Flexibility and Scale: Advanced Multicolumn E-Beam Litho for Rapid Fabrication of High-Resolution Sub-Micron Structures
ABSTRACT
MEMS technology encompasses a highly diverse set of microdevices with a wide range of manufacturing requirements. The multifaceted nature of the MEMS market generally requires custom manufacturing solutions for each device, which complicates the development and slows time to production. Multibeam’s high-productivity Multicolumn Electron Beam Lithography (MEBL) platform benefits the MEMS industry by opening a wider design space for designers and providing manufacturers increased flexibility to rapidly ramp the production of new technologies.
Multibeam is shipping a production system in Q2 2024 and will discuss our path forward in the market as part of this presentation. Multibeam’s advanced multicolumn e-beam platform provides several benefits not otherwise available to MEMS lithographers, which address key challenges that arise in the fabrication process. Like conventional electron beam lithography, it can achieve very high resolution and exceptionally large depth-of-focus, each 10-100x better than that of optical systems. However, our system achieves this with productivity 100x greater than single electron beam lithography, corresponding to production-worthy throughput. Furthermore, the technology’s full-wafer patterning capability is not restricted to a 26x33 mm2 or similarly finite reticle field, allowing designers the flexibility to create patterns that are arbitrarily large. Multibeam will discuss specific applications which benefit from MEBL’s superior line edge roughness, including photonic and bio-sensor applications which require intricate, curvilinear patterns. We will also discuss MEMS applications where topology, depth of focus, and resolution limitations would present challenges for conventional lithography tools.
Today, there is no commercially available, production-worthy, high-resolution lithography system capable of writing fine features (below 50nm) on 200mm and smaller substrates. Such resolution and depth-of-focus allows for seamless accommodation of high aspect ratio structures, which is key for advanced MEMS fabrication. This production system also provides additional benefits to manufacturers of high-mix, low-volume devices which account for many of the highest-margin MEMS products today. The maskless nature of electron beam lithography enables precise customization of devices within a wafer, which can enable applications like built-in hardware security and simultaneous fabrication of many design splits to rapidly ramp production. This capability alone can cut the cost of a full prototyping wafer run of a new MEMS design to as low as 5% of the initial cost [1]. Furthermore, the same Multibeam system can be used for ramping production with 100x the throughput of single-beam systems. In comparison to the other direct write product offerings on the market, the competitive landscape is favorable to Multibeam’s unique combination of productivity, cycle time, adaptability, precision, and resolution.
This presentation will showcase the key capabilities and writing results of Multibeam’s system that enable streamlined, high-resolution volume production of MEMS devices on 200mm and smaller substrates. We will examine three main limitations in the MEMS space (that to date have been mutually exclusive), that Multibeam technology directly addresses: depth of focus, resolution, and productivity. Multibeam presents a system that meets unrealized needs in MEMS fabrication, advanced packaging, and 3D patterning, filling gaps left by current lithography solutions.
BIOGRAPHY COMING SOON
Dr. Ken MacWilliams is President of Multibeam Corporation and brings decades of experience in semiconductor device, process, and equipment innovations. He joined Multibeam in 2020 to help productize the world’s first cost-effective, direct-write lithography system. Dr. MacWilliams has launched multiple novel equipment platforms and processes with the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers. He held senior management positions with several high-tech companies, including Applied Materials, Veeco, Yield Engineering Systems (YES), and Novellus (acquired by Lam Research). He holds Ph.D. and M.S. Electrical Engineering degrees from Stanford University. He is an NSF Fellow with over 100 publications, and more than a dozen patents.