EUV assistance, would be economically challenging, since the departure from EUV single exposure would drive up the cost even higher. However, at least down to 12 nm half-pitch, LELE followed by SADP (SID) appears to be a promising approach, using only two masks, and also using the most mature double patterning techniques, LELE and SADP. Patterning costs Ref.: A. Raley et al., Proc. SPIE 9782, 97820F (2016). Compared to 193i SADP, EUV SADP cost is dominated by the EUV tool exposure, while the 193i SAQP cost difference is from the added depositions and etches. The processing cost and yield loss at a lithographic tool is expected to be highest in the whole integrated process flow due to the need to move the wafer to specific locations at high speed. EUV further suffers from the shot noise limit, which forces the dose to increase going for successive nodes. On the other hand, depositions and etches process entire wafers at once, without the need for wafer stage motion in the process chamber. In fact, multiple layers may be added under the resist layer for anti-reflection or etch hard-mask purposes, just for conventional single exposure. Published silicon demonstrations Leading-edge logic/ASIC multi-patterning practices Even with the introduction of EUV technology in some cases, multiple patterning has continued to be implemented in the majority of layers being produced. For example, quadruple patterning continues to be used for 7nm by Samsung. TSMC's 7nm+ process also makes use of EUV in a multi-patterning context. Only a few layers are affected anyway; many remain conventional multi-patterning. Mask costs The mask cost strongly benefits from the use of multiple patterning. The EUV single exposure mask has smaller features which take much longer to write than the immersion mask. Even though mask features are 4x larger than wafer features, the number of shots is exponentially increased for much smaller features. Furthermore, the sub-100 nm features on the mask are also much harder to pattern, with absorber heights ≈70 nm. Wafer productivityNote: WPM = WPH * # tools * uptime / # passes * 24 hrs/day * 30 days/month. Normalized WPM = WPM/(WPM for EUV 1 pass)'' Multiple patterning with immersion scanners can be expected to have higher wafer productivity than EUV, even with as many as 4 passes per layer, due to faster wafer exposure throughput (WPH), a larger number of tools being available, and higher uptime. Multiple patterning specific