Feb 24 2014
The SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) announced that its globally recognized, nanotechnology-based research will be featured at the world’s leading lithography forum, with nearly two dozen technical papers accepted for presentation at SPIE Advanced Lithography 2014, held annually in California.
“SUNY CNSE is once again excited to be playing a central role in moving the semiconductor industry forward through pioneering lithography research,” said CNSE Executive Vice President of Innovation and Technology and Vice President for Research Dr. Michael Liehr. “The scientific papers that will be presented by CNSE’s researchers at SPIE Advanced Lithography showcase the results of New York State’s expanding nanotechnology-based ecosystem as it enables innovative semiconductor-based research, development, manufacturing, and commercialization and reveals the power of high-tech collaboration between CNSE and its corporate partners.”
CNSE-led research papers that will be presented at SPIE Advanced Lithography cover technical areas that are critical for tackling current technological limitations that are impacting advanced lithography introduction. Topics include, “Methods of controlling cross-linking in negative tone resists,” “Positive tone cross-linked resists based on photoacid inhibition of cross linking,” “Understanding EUV resist mottling leading to better resolution and line-width roughness,” “The study of EUV resist material to prevent out-of-band (OOB) effects,” “Metrology for directed self-assembly block lithography using optical scatterometry,” “A molecular inorganic approach to EUV photoresists,” and “Study of alternative capping and absorber layers for EUV masks for sub-16 nm HP nodes,” among others.
The CNSE-based research papers to be presented at SPIE Advanced Lithography result from the work of leading CNSE scientists and collaborating researchers from the NanoCollege’s corporate partners, including SEMATECH, DOW Chemical, and Kumho Petrochemical Co., Ltd.
In addition, CNSE Center for Nanolithography Development Director Dr. Timothy Groves will present a keynote presentation titled, “E-beam lithography: The real case for manufacturing.” Dr. Groves will discuss the benefits and challenges related to electron beam lithography. This is the technology which enables the writing of patterns to create computer chips with features below ten nanometers in size in high-volume manufacturing. E-beam lithography is well known for its ability to provide ultimate lithographic resolution without the need of a pre-existing mask, referred to as direct-write lithography. The historical Achilles’s Heel of e-beam lithography has been low throughput. Dr. Groves presents a strong case for using massively high pixel parallelism with multiple electron sources to potentially resolve the throughput bottleneck. He argues that the financial investment needed to see this through to high-volume manufacturing is relatively modest, in light of the rapidly escalating cost associated with competing and incumbent exposure technologies. The end result will be enhanced computational performance at affordable cost to the end-user. Dr. Groves serves as Empire Innovation Professor of Nanoscale Science and CNSE Vice President of Academic Affairs.
The 40th annual SPIE Advanced Lithography conference is being held February 23 through 27 in California at the San Jose Convention Center and San Jose Marriott and is regarded as the world’s leading nanoelectronics lithography conference and exhibition.