Picture an elevator shaft running through a towering skyscraper. The higher the number of floors, the more critical it is that the shaft stays plumb, precisely dimensioned, and level at every landing. Minor alignment or stability errors quickly compound as the structure grows—turning height from a benefit to a liability.

Advanced chipmaking faces a similar challenge. As traditional 2D Moore’s Law scaling slows, the transistors and memory cells needed for expanding AI workloads increasingly come from vertically stacked semiconductor devices—as with gate‑all‑around (GAA) transistors and high‑bandwidth memory (HBM) DRAM. To enable this vertical integration, chipmakers must be able to etch extremely deep, narrow 3D trenches through multiple layers to build and connect logic, memory, and wiring.

By operating at microsecond timescales instead of RF’s millisecond pulses, PVT offers far sharper control over ion formation and impact at the wafer surface. As aspect ratios climb, the result is smoother sidewalls and more uniform vertical profiles. With tool‑of‑record status in 2nm logic and HBM DRAM manufacturing and more than 250 chambers deployed, Sym3 Z sets a new baseline for advanced 3D conductor etch patterning.

Still, looking ahead to future nodes, scaling pressures continue to intensify. As the industry enters the angstrom era, 3D structures are growing deeper and must meet ever‑tighter tolerances—requiring perfectly flat, rectangular bottoms and uniform feature depths across the wafer.

At the core of Sym3 Z Magnum is PVT2, the second generation of Pulsed Voltage Technology. PVT2 concentrates reactant ions directly at the wafer surface, allowing etched features to respond more predictably to process settings as depths increase. Crucially, it enables near‑wafer plasma control alongside independent tuning of ion angle and ion energy. The result is a dual‑mode etch that combines rigorous trench etching and precise bottom‑corner shaping. This simultaneous delivery preserves feature geometry even as aspect ratios climb and tolerances narrow. Where conventional etch systems trade off plasma proximity and ion directionality, Sym3 Z Magnum is the first to offer both—closing a critical gap for next‑generation 3D architectures.