Canon
Canvas Category Machinery : Special Purpose : Semiconductor
Pooling the strengths of the entire Canon Group, we are expanding the scope of our business and breaking new ground with industrial equipment that supports society. With the arrival of the IoT age, the semiconductor chip market has diversified even further. Our high-productivity equipment helps meet the growing demand for chips in the automotive and communication devices that are driving market expansion.
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Canon develops high-performance materials for perovskite solar cells to improve substantial durability and mass-production stability
Canon Inc. announced that it has developed a high-performance material which is expected to improve the durability and mass-production stability of perovskite solar cells. The company will further develop the technology and aims to initiate mass production in 2025.
The key characteristic of this material is its ability to cover the perovskite layer thickly while maintaining a high rate of photoelectric conversion efficiency, which has been difficult with conventional materials. The material can be coated at a thickness of 100-200 nm, whereas the conventional coating layer is several tens of nm*. Through joint research with Professor Dr. Tsutomu Miyasaka, inventor of the perovskite solar cell and faculty member at Toin University of Yokohama, a performance evaluation was conducted, the results of which verified its potential to improve the durability of perovskite solar cells and showed promise in advancing the stability of mass production. It is anticipated that solving these hurdles will help contribute to more widespread use. “By adding a layer of this newly developed high-performance material to the layer structure of these cells, we can expect to solve the issue of mass production,” said Professor Miyasaka.
Canon aims to ship low-cost ‘stamp’ machine this year to disrupt chipmaking
First unveiled in mid-October, Canon’s nanoimprint lithography — a technology under development for more than 15 years but which the company says is only now commercially viable — stamps chip designs on to silicon wafers rather than etching them using light. The process, says Canon, will be “one digit” cheaper and use up to 90 per cent less power than Netherlands-based ASML’s market-dominating and light-based extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology.
Nanoimprint lithography semiconductor manufacturing system that covers diverse applications with simple patterning mechanism
On October 13, 2023, Canon announced today the launch of the FPA-1200NZ2C nanoimprint semiconductor manufacturing equipment, which executes circuit pattern transfer, the most important semiconductor manufacturing process. By bringing to market semiconductor manufacturing equipment with nanoimprint lithography (NIL) technology, in addition to existing photolithography systems, Canon is expanding its lineup of semiconductor manufacturing equipment to meet the needs of a wide range of users by covering from the most advanced semiconductor devices to the existing devices.
Canon’s NIL technology enables patterning with a minimum linewidth of 14 nm2, equivalent to the 5-nm-node3 required to produce most advanced logic semiconductors which are currently available. Furthermore, with further improvement of mask technology, NIL is expected to enable circuit patterning with a minimum linewidth of 10 nm, which corresponds to 2-nm-node.