Ultraviolet exposure machine, also known as lithography machine, mask alignment exposure machine, exposure system, lithography system, etc., is an important equipment in the production process of printed circuit board (PCB). General lithography process to go through the wafer surface cleaning and drying, coating, spin coating photoresist, soft drying, alignment exposure, after drying, development, hard drying, etching and other processes. Its main performance indicators are: support substrate size range, resolution, alignment accuracy, exposure mode, light source wavelength, light intensity uniformity, production efficiency and so on.
Integrated circuit manufacturing technology plays an irreplaceable role in the process of the continuous improvement of integrated circuit integration. Integrated circuit manufacturing processes are numerous and complex, one of which is to transfer the layout of the designed circuit to the silicon chip to form integrated circuits. This technology is photolithography, and the main equipment used is lithography. The resolution and the accuracy of the lithography directly determine the integration of the integrated circuits. And the development of lithography machine involves optical, mechanical, precision measurement, control and other technologies, so it is the whole integrated circuit manufacturing in one of the most complex and high precision equipment, is also one of the most critical equipment. In addition, the lithographic machine also has an economic index - yield, around these three indicators, the development of lithographic machine technology continues to progress, promoting the development of integrated circuit manufacturing technology. For example, ASML in the Netherlands upgraded TWINSCAN XT: 1950Hi to TWINSCAN XT: 1950i, and the accuracy and yield increased by about 37.5% and 18.2% respectively.
At present, the main manufacturers of lithography machine are ASML company of Holland and Nikon and Canon of Japan, which almost monopolize the global lithography machine market. China is a big consumer and producer of integrated circuits, but the main production is low-end integrated circuits. In recent years, some foreign IC manufacturers have been introduced, such as MCI, TSMC and Hongli Semiconductor, but the key technologies of lithography still can not be obtained. In order to promote the leap-forward development of China's integrated circuit industry, and to promote the industrialization and informatization process of China, in the "Outline of the National Medium and Long-term Scientific and Technological Development Plan (2006-2020)" issued in 2006, the state made "the manufacturing equipment and complete sets of processes for large-scale integrated circuits" as a major special project. Through the implementation of this special project, some achievements have been achieved.
