October 1, 2003
Gigaphoton Introduces New KrF Excimer Laser, Model G41K, while Reducing Running Cost of Its KrF Excimer Lasers

Gigaphoton Inc. (President and Representative Director: Dr. Yuji Watanabe), a major lithography light source manufacturer for the world semiconductor industry, today announced that the company has developed and begun marketing of a new product: the G41K model of KrF (Krypton Fluoride) excimer laser (emission wavelength of 248 nm, repetition rate of 4000 Hz) as a lithography light source for 100 nm or below. The G41K is an upgraded model of the G40K 4-kHz KrF excimer laser, which has consistently proven its high performance and high uptime in the field since Gigaphoton brought it to market in 2001. The new G41K features greatly improved and prolonged life of the laser chamber, thus achieving a great reduction of running cost.

The G41K achieves high laser-emission efficiency with sufficient margin by increasing the output of the high-voltage power supply of the G40K and using a highly efficient line-narrowing module. In addition, use of the non-contact magnetic levitation bearing as a standard feature for the gas circulation fan (cross-flow fan) in the laser chamber allows a great reduction in contamination caused by chemical impurities generated from the bearing mechanism of the fan, thereby successfully minimizing the aging of the laser chamber.

With the above improvement of emission efficiency and durability, the replacement interval of the laser chamber has been prolonged from 15 billion pulses to 20 billion pulses. As the laser chamber accounts for a large percentage of the cost of excimer laser consumables, this improvement reduces the running cost by approx. 10% (compared with the conventional model “G40K”).