Moore's Law, which roughly states that chip performance doubles every 18 months while costs remain the same, continues its march in Texas. TexasInstruments
Semiconductor manufacturers use lithography to "draw" complicated patterns on silicon wafers. The smaller those features get, the more circuits engineers can pack onto a single chip, boosting speed and computing power. But as the circuits' size shrinks, the lithography process must be modified to draw finer features -- which poses a host of problems for chip engineers.
To clear some of these hurdles, TI and others will introduce one modification at 45 nanometers that wasn't needed for the current leading-edge 65-nanometer devices: "immersion" lithography, in which water covers the surface of the wafer during the lithography process. It's a process many in the industry may soon have to adopt, for several key reasons.
Modern lithography tools use a laser to create their patterns. Drawing small features requires a laser with a short wavelength; its light can be focused to a smaller point, creating more finely detailed etchings than long-wavelength light. Modern lithography tools use a laser with a wavelength of 193 nanometers, which is just too large for the newest chip designs.
There's a suitable laser available with a wavelength of 157 nanometers, but an industrywide switch to this laser would be time-consuming and expensive. However, when light passes through water, its wavelength shortens. By covering the top of the wafer with water, TI can use its existing 193-nanometer lasers to print features with higher resolution than it could with the wafer in air.
Despite TI's success in developing a workable immersion lithography process, immersion introduces a whole series of complications. Although lithography-tool vendors like ASML
Given the high costs of outfitting a modern fabrication facility, many semiconductor chip companies, like LSI Logic
Even with rising costs, big companies like Intel
Talk tech with further Foolishness:
Think small on our Texas Instruments discussion board.
Intel is a Motley Fool Inside Value pick. To discover more huge stock performers trading at tiny prices, sign up for a free 30-day guest pass.
Fool contributor Dan Bloom owns shares of Cypress and Intel, but holds no financial position in any other companies mentioned. The Fool has a disclosure policy.