Wednesday continued with many more papers on directed self-assembly (DSA). I’m excited about the potential for DSA, but is it bad for me to admit that my eyes started to glaze over after so many images of lines too small to see? I enjoyed an SKHynix paper on “pattern wiggle metrology”, a topic similar to things discussed by Ricardo Ruiz yesterday. Isn’t it interesting that a new idea is often discussed for the first time by several different groups simultaneously? Science and business both cherish their myths of the lone discoverer or inventor, but the reality is that we are a part of a community and have more in common than in difference.
In the Alternative Litho conference I saw an update from Mapper (very little progress) and REBL (making some progress, but not enough to catch up), as well as a little data on nanoimprint as applied to flash memory (we’ll probably have to wait until next year to find out how that work is really going).
The exposure mechanism for EUV resists is a fascinating topic. Greg Denbeaux described an apparatus he is building to expose resist to 80 eV (and eventually lower energy) electrons to explore the fundamental impact of low-energy secondary electrons on acid generation. Fascinating work – we need these kinds of fundamental studies if we ever hope to understand and optimize these resists.
And finally, a small crowd of people gathered before the still closed doors of the poster session just before 6pm in a solemn ceremony marking the official death of Moore’s Law. Despite the presence of counter protesters from the Intel religious faction, the crowd raised their drink tickets to make a virtual toast: “Moore’s Law is dead. Long live Moore’s Law.” Thus, as the poster session doors were opened, the first EOML day ended as all such future celebrations should, with technical discussions on lithography.