BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA — This month, the Journal of Micro/Nanopatterning, Materials, and Metrology (JM³), published the "International Roadmap for Devices and Systems lithography roadmap" by Mark Neisser. This paper reviews and complements the lithography chapter of the annual International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS) report, which also includes topics like factory integration, metrology, CMOS, yield enhancement, and application benchmarking.

The 2021 lithography roadmap will help guide the lithography industry's plans for future investment, research, and development, and details the field's requirements, possible options, and expected challenges for the next 15 years.

Key takeaways
• Logic devices will drive leading-edge lithography
• Improved extreme ultraviolet lithography is a leading candidate for next-gen semiconductors, though other options are also possible, particular for cost reduction and niche applications
• Short-term challenges for the industry include stochastics, edge placement error, and cost
• Short-term resist dose-to-print is expected to rise substantially unless critical process innovation occurs

The roadmap projects future challenges for semiconductors and possible solutions to those challenges. It shows that logic devices will drive shrinking critical dimensions and improvements in patterning for roughly the next 10 years. It is the product of the work of an international collection of experts from industry and academia, including representatives from leading semiconductor suppliers ASML, Nikon, IMEC, Samsung, Lam Research, and Zeiss, among others.

"Roadmaps such as this are invaluable for lithographers," notes JM³ Editor-in-Chief Harry Levinson. "They enable us to have meaningful exchanges regarding technology parameters and targets that would otherwise be too company-sensitive to discuss. They also provide a common reference for people focused on different elements of lithographic technology - equipment, materials, masks, and metrology."

JM³ is available to subscribers in the SPIE Digital Library. It is one of 12 journals currently published by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.

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