TOCHIGI, Japan, Sept. 10 -- Komatsu Ltd. announced that it has completed the installation at a major Japanese chip manufacturer of the world's first 2-kHz deep UV excimer laser for use in producing silicon wafers. The company says the new laser, called the G20K, delivers twice the power of 1-kHz lasers and can perform photolithography at a higher repetition rate, leading to increased throughput.
The G20K is a 248-nm KrF 2000-Hz excimer laser light source with newly designed sub-systems that double the device's life expectancy to 10 billion pulses. The device is Komatsu's fifth generation KrF excimer laser. The company announced recently that it expects to introduce its first 2-kHz argon-fluoride (ArF) laser for volume production in the 4th quarter of this year.