What is EUV Vizeon?
EUV Vizeon is engineered to meet today’s requirements while supporting tomorrow’s EUV roadmaps. By combining vacuum generation, hydrogen management, exhaust gas handling and coordinated control in one modular platform, it helps customers reduce footprint, lower utility consumption and improve productivity across current and future EUV generations..
Integrated sub-fab support for EUV tools
EUV Vizeon is installed in the sub-fab and directly connected to the EUV lithography tool above. It is not the lithography tool itself, but the integrated support system that helps the tool run efficiently, reliably and safely. The platform coordinates vacuum generation, hydrogen handling, exhaust gas management and system control in one optimised architecture.
Built as a modular series of integrated slices, EUV Vizeon combines advanced dry pumps, boosters, exhaust gas management, hydrogen dilution and central control into one coordinated system. This modular design helps simplify integration in tight sub-fab spaces and gives customers a scalable solution aligned to their process and facility requirements.
EUV Vizeon is designed to meet the stringent footprint constraints of leading fabs, with a reduced height of less than 2 metres to suit global customer requirements. By reducing sub-fab footprint and height while maintaining performance, it helps customers use valuable fab space more efficiently.
Watch the video below with Richard Salloum, Senior Product Manager for EUV Integrated Systems from Edwards to learn about EUV Vizion and related technologies
Key features and benefits:
- Smaller footprint for better fab efficiency
- Lower power and utility consumption
- Built for high hydrogen flow EUV processes
Smaller footprint for better fab efficiency
The footprint of an EUV lithography process tool has a direct impact on facility costs and fab productivity. For a gating tool such as EUV, sub-fab equipment must typically fit within the footprint shadow of the tool it supports. As EUV processes demand more vacuum, exhaust and supporting infrastructure, space efficiency becomes critical.
By integrating critical functions into one coordinated platform, EUV Vizeon helps reduce sub-fab footprint without compromising performance. This creates more flexibility for fab layout, supports future capacity growth and contributes to lower total cost of ownership.
Lower power and utility consumption
The power required to create EUV illumination is significantly higher than in previous lithography generations, increasing scrutiny of every supporting system in the fab. Customers are looking closely at utility costs, environmental impact and the overall energy efficiency of ancillary equipment such as vacuum systems.
Edwards EUV Vizeon systems provide a 24% reduction in pump power consumption compared with our previous platform by utilising the latest technology from our low-power dry pumps and high-performance boosters. The result is a more efficient EUV support system that helps customers reduce operating costs while supporting sustainability goals.
Built for high hydrogen flow EUV processes
Our latest 4th-generation integrated platform, EUV Vizeon, delivers the performance needed to maintain stable vacuum levels while managing the high hydrogen flow rates essential to EUV processes. Designed with flow rates up to 1000 slm in mind, it supports the evolving needs of both end users and EUV tool OEMs.
Built around proven vacuum technologies and advanced system integration, EUV Vizeon combines robust pumping performance with coordinated gas handling and control. This system-level approach helps maintain process stability today while supporting the foreseeable future of EUV lithography.
Designed to maximise uptime
The high capital investment required for EUV lithography puts intense pressure on manufacturers to maximise availability and achieve acceptable returns. From the sub-fab perspective, that means maintenance must be planned to align with scheduled EUV system maintenance wherever possible.
As EUV systems mature and maintenance windows shrink, unplanned disruption becomes even more costly. EUV Vizeon is designed for reliability and serviceability, so that vacuum support does not become a bottleneck to tool output.
Our systems include hot-swappable pumps for fail-safe backup, and major maintenance procedures can be performed while the system remains online.
The latest data confirm 99.9% average availability across our integrated vacuum and exhaust management systems supporting EUV processes.
Safe hydrogen handling in EUV lithography
Safety in EUV lithography depends heavily on how high hydrogen flows are managed. Conventional approaches such as controlled burning or nitrogen dilution can add significant economic and environmental cost, especially at the gas volumes required by advanced EUV processes.
Edwards addresses this challenge with an innovative air-dilution approach, supported by deep expertise in flammability limits, dilution technologies and industry safety standards. It is designed to manage hydrogen safely while improving system efficiency.
By keeping the critical path where the mixture is flammable very short and carefully monitored, the gas is quickly diluted to non-flammable concentrations that can then be safely conveyed through the fab and released. Air dilution eliminates the fuel cost and carbon emissions of controlled burning and avoids the high cost of nitrogen for dilution.
Sustainability and lower total cost of ownership
Edwards (as part of Atlas Copco) is committed to using the methodology defined by the Science Based-Targets initiative (SBTi) to achieve its goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. These include reducing Edwards’ own emissions, the emissions of our suppliers, and the emissions resulting from our customers’ use of our products. SBTi drives ambitious climate action among industry stakeholders by enabling companies to set emission reduction targets using a consistent, science-based methodology.
Sustainability is now closely linked to productivity, utility efficiency and total cost of ownership in advanced semiconductor manufacturing. EUV Vizeon is designed to reduce the environmental impact of EUV support infrastructure through lower power demand, reduced utility consumption and hydrogen recovery. Compared with previous systems, our new integrated system delivers a 49% total-energy-equivalent reduction together with significant reductions in CO2 equivalent and greenhouse gas emissions.
Integrated vacuum, hydrogen handling and control for EUV lithography
Over decades, Edwards has played a central role in the development and deployment of EUV lithography integrated sub-systems systems, delivering more than 200 vacuum and exhaust gas management systems worldwide. EUV Vizeon builds on that experience as Edwards’ integrated sub-fab support system for advanced EUV lithography.
EUV lithography is used to manufacture the most advanced logic chips and high-bandwidth memory. It depends on stable vacuum, high hydrogen flow, precise exhaust gas management and maximum uptime in a tightly controlled cleanroom and sub-fab environment. As EUV has moved from emerging technology to high-volume manufacturing, the demands on sub-fab systems have expanded dramatically.
