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In semiconductor manufacturing, a mask is sometimes called a reticle. [1] [2] In photolithography, several masks are used in turn, each one reproducing a layer of the completed design, and together known as a mask set. A curvilinear photomask has patterns with curves, which is a departure from conventional photomasks which only have patterns ...
reticle – a partial plate with holes or transparencies used in photolithography integrated circuit fabrication RDL – see redistribution layer semiconductor – a material with an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor and an insulator ; its resistivity falls as its temperature rises
Both wafers and reticles can be handled by SMIF pods in a semiconductor fabrication environment. Used in lithographic tools, reticles or photomasks contain the image that is exposed on a coated wafer in one processing step of a complete integrated semiconductor manufacturing cycle. Because reticles are linked so directly with wafer processing ...
A variety of reticles, each appropriate for one stage in the process, are contained in a rack in the reticle loader, usually located at the upper front of the stepper. Before the wafer is exposed a reticle is loaded onto the reticle stage by a robot, where it is also very precisely aligned. Since the same reticle can be used to expose many ...
This process starts with the design of the IC circuitry as a series of layers than will be patterned onto the surface of a sheet of silicon or other semiconductor material known as a wafer. Each layer of the ultimate design is patterned onto a photomask , which in modern systems is made of fine lines of chromium deposited on highly purified ...
An illustration of OPC (Optical Proximity Correction). The blue Γ-like shape is what chip designers would like printed on a wafer, in green is the pattern on a mask after applying optical proximity correction, and the red contour is how the shape actually prints on the wafer (quite close to the desired blue target).
Computational lithography came to the forefront of photolithography technologies in 2008 when the semiconductor industry faced challenges associated with the transition to a 22 nanometer CMOS microfabrication process and has become instrumental in further shrinking the design nodes and topology of semiconductor transistor manufacturing.
Unlike electronic integration where silicon is the dominant material, system photonic integrated circuits have been fabricated from a variety of material systems, including electro-optic crystals such as lithium niobate, silica on silicon, silicon on insulator, various polymers, and semiconductor materials which are used to make semiconductor lasers such as GaAs and InP.