Arradiance was incorporated in November of 2003 to develop critical massively parallel e-beam source technology designed to eliminate the throughput limitation of electron beam lithography by deploying a switching densely packed array of electrons sources. Like a modern printer head, this technology would allow for the first time:

    ●    High throughput electron beam lithography
    ●    Extensible for several generations along the ITRS roadmap

Simultaneously reducing costs of both production semiconductors and equipment by:

    ●    Offering true maskless operation
    ●    Elimination of many of the high cost optical subsystems found on modern lithography equipment
    ●    Improvements in chip design cycle time (True CAD/CAL) operation
    ●    Enabling greater wafer scale integration and chip customization capabilities

The trends in semiconductor device manufacturing requiring reduction in resolution to achieve greater packing density of transistors per unit area are well known. The empirical observation made in 1965, often referred to as Moore's Law attributed to Gordon E. Moore a co-founder of Intel, states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit for minimum component cost doubles every 24 months.

Optical photo lithography is the backbone technology for the critical imaging and replication process for IC production. However the complexity and cost of these technologies has also increased at similar rates. Additionally, mask costs have become a significant percentage of the chip cost, especially at low volume, due to incorporation of phase shift technologies to overcome the resolution limitations of optical projection lithography. Below 45 nm half pitch, it is not certain if optical technology can continue to be a cost effective production solution in many IC markets.

Electron beam direct write lithography (using a directed focused electron beam to expose resist) has been deployed since the early 1980’s for mask fabrication and critical prototyping. As electrons have a much shorter inherent wavelength, resolution is not fundamentally limited as is the case with photonic optical technology. However, deployment of such systems in production semiconductor manufacturing environment has been limited by realizable throughput of single beam solutions.

One critical component of Arradiance technology is the electron multiplier.  The usefulness of compact, solid state electron multipliers is well known. However, the state-of-the-art has not advanced significantly since the mid-1970s Micro Channel Plate (MCP) design. Arradiance’ massively parallel source for maskless, electron beam direct write lithography uses a silicon-based version of a MicroChannel Plate called the Microchannel Amplifier (MCA), whose function, similar to the MCP, is to amplify electrons from an electron source and, by operating in current saturation, to simultaneously damp the characteristic electron current fluctuations of the electron source, thereby providing the dose control and uniformity required for advanced lithography. To address the MCA resistive and emissive layer performance, Arradiance is developing advanced engineered films and associated deposition process and equipment technology. These processes will give Arradiance the capability to precisely deposit a wide range of films onto the Silicon and glass substrates necessary for improvements in image intensifiers and charged particle sources and detectors.

Improved sensitivity, better time and spatial resolution, detection efficiency and increased lifetime in such applications as military night vision, scientific instrumentation, and emerging fluorescence imaging in biotechnology all demand advances in MCP technology. The innovations which are the result of Arradiance research will expand traditional MCP applications and open up important new applications in such vital areas as biotechnology, homeland security, and the environment.