A micro-positioning motion system to enhance lithography in semiconductor manufacturing machines

Al-Tamimi, Mahmoud (2020) A micro-positioning motion system to enhance lithography in semiconductor manufacturing machines. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

This study proposes a novel precision micro-motion system to enhance the lithography process in the semiconductor manufacturing machines. This proposed micro-motion system is a new smart-materials stage that integrates piezoelectric actuators in the reticle stage of the future semiconductor manufacturing machines. The proposed smart-materials based reticle (SMBR) implements piezoelectric actuators to a novel flexure hinge-based mechanism to enhance the precision of the reticle stage; such that it reduces the relative in-plane micro-positioning errors in the synchronization motion between the reticle stage and the wafer stage in a time period less than the current settling time in lithography machines, 10 ms. The proposed SMBR can provide in-plane translational motions along x- and y-axes, and in-plane θz-rotational motion around z-axis with an amount of 11:7462 μm x 11:7462 μm x 0:4713 mrad, respectively, to correct the orientation of the reticle stage which governs the pattern of the integrated circuit being printed. The proposed SMBR considers the current dynamic performance of reticle stage of the semiconductor manufacturing machines; such that (i) it corrects the in-plane synchronization errors in a time period less than the settling time of the short-stroke, and (ii) the working frequency bandwidth remains above 550 Hz. The proposed SMBR can be integrated with the precision motion systems of the semiconductor manufacturing machines to enhance the storage capacity, the functionality of the devices, and the CPU processing capability.

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