Toppan Printing enters into agreement with IBM

The development work will take place at IBM’s photomask facility in Essex Junction, VT, and Toppan’s Asaka photomask facility in Niiza, Saitama, Japan, from January 2011 through 2012. This new agreement represents the continuation of a partnership that began in 2005 with 45nm photomask process development, and has progressed through the 32nm, 28nm, 22nm, and 20nm technology nodes. The jointly developed photomask manufacturing processes have been essential contributors to advanced wafer process development by IBM and its partners in East Fishkill and Albany, NY. Several new technologies including extreme ultraviolet (EUV) have been evaluated for next-generation lithography solutions. While Toppan Printing is committed to supporting those developments, IBM has developed a technology roadmap for ArF immersion lithography, a current mainstream technology that allows its extension to the 14nm generation through the use of IBM’s regarded resolution enhancement techniques. As a result, Toppan and IBM will focus their joint development efforts on ArF immersion lithography for the 14nm node.