Toshiba has entered into an agreement with SK hynix on joint development of Nano Imprint Lithography (NIL), the companies announced Thursday. Engineers from the two companies will start development of basic technologies for the process at Toshiba's Yokohama Complex in Yokohama, Japan in April this year, targeting practical use in 2017. Today?s announcement follows a MOU that the companies signed in December last year.

Toshiba has worked with several equipment and materials companies on NIL, integrating their technologies with Toshiba's semiconductor manufacturing process. The new joint development program with SK hynix accelerate progress towards practical use and will mitigate burden of Toshiba's investment into NIL development.

NIL is the one of candidate technologies for advancing the migration to future generations of memory devices. Photolithography, the current mainstream process technology, uses a laser and photosensitive mask to etch circuits on a light-sensitive coating on semiconductor wafers. NIL transfers the circuit design directly, by impressing a patterned template onto the wafer. This has the potential to achieve finer designs.

Toshiba will continue drive development of next generation lithography technology, such as NIL and extreme ultraviolet lithography, as a means to strengthen its memory business and the migration to future product generations.