According to South Korea's **Business Korea, Kang Young-Seok, a researcher at Samsung Electronics' DS department, said that the transmission rate of EUV pellicles used by Samsung has reached 90%, and it is planned to further increase it to 94-96%.
EUV reticle mask (pellicle) is a thin film on the reticle that protects the reticle from contamination by fine dust or volatile gases, enabling the smooth transmission of EUV. The mask mask is also a key component in EUV** to increase chip production yield and reduce cleaning and inspection during mask use.
Earlier this year, Samsung claimed that it had developed a EUV mask protector with a light transmittance of 88%, and that this product was ready for mass production, while Kang said that the light transmittance of Samsung's EUV protective film had increased to 90% again. This is higher than the light transmittance of thin films (99.) used in the more common argon fluoride (ARF) process3%) to be low.
When the EUV mask is operated under a 250 watt light source, 5 watts of heat per square centimeter are generated, resulting in temperatures of more than 680 watts, so in addition to reducing light source degradation, it is also necessary to address heat dissipation issues such as warpage or breakage encountered by the mask mask during the EUV process.
It has been reported that Samsung has introduced EUV mask masks on some of its major customers' advanced EUV OEM production lines. Although Samsung is also using the EUV process in its DRAM production line, considering the productivity and cost, the company believes that it can mass-produce memory even without a mask mask.
EUV mask mask is currently ASML, Mitsui Chemicals, Shin-Etsu Chemical, S&S Tech, FST and other industries, but according to Kang, Samsung does not use EUV mask mask provided by South Korea's domestic manufacturers, but cooperates with Japan's Mitsui Chemicals as the only manufacturer.
Although Korean companies such as FST and S&Stech are actively developing EUV mask masks, they have not yet achieved mass production. In contrast, TSMC began using self-developed mask masks as early as 2019 and has been used in production lines with sub-7nm processes.