All posts by Chris

Jeff Stories #2

Jeff Byers and his wife Carita live on the Yak Farm. That is the name they have given to their property – about 40 acres in Blue, Texas, which is about 40 miles east and a little north of Austin. They built their house almost entirely by themselves – but maybe I should call it their “compound” rather than their house, since it currently consists of three buildings and a pond that Jeff dug and will probably grow from there. They started by building the workshop, then lived there as they built the house. They just recently finished building #3, Carita’s bath house. As far as I know, Jeff and Carita have never owned any yaks, though they do raise chickens and stray dogs on their place. I never asked where the name “Yak Farm” came from – as soon as I heard it, the name just fit Jeff’s style so well that it I instantly accepted it as the only possible name for his place.

Jeff underwent surgery this morning – a tracheotomy so that the breathing tubes can be removed. Jeff’s healing continues to go well.

Jeff Stories

Jeff Byers loves children – this I have known for a long time. But I’ve been able to see it in action over the last two years as he has played with my daughter, Sarah. When it comes right down to it, Jeff is just a great, big teddy bear (both outside and inside), and kids love him, too. A couple of months ago (Sarah was just shy of turning two) Jeff and some other friends were over at my house enjoying a beer after work. Jeff and Sarah disappeared into the room next door. A few minutes later Sarah returned with great excitement and fanfare – Jeff had taught her how to paint her toenails with crayons, a skill she still practices. Jeff has not yet met my youngest daughter, Anna. She was born on the day of Jeff’s car accident. I look forward to that day.

Jeff seems to be improving. All of the normal trauma one would expect from a serious car crash – cuts, bruises, swelling, broken bones – are healing very well, faster than expected. He has moved his arms and legs some, and his friend and family take encouragement from these small signs.

Jeffrey Byers – Eminent Lithographer

If memory serves me right, I’ve know Jeff now for about 15 years. He is just about the smartest guy I have ever met – and not just on his thesis topic either (computational quantum chemistry), but on many, many subjects useful to a lithographer, chemist, or scientist in general. I have learned a tremendous amount from Jeff, and it seems I learn something more every time we talk. For example, last year Jeff taught me how to brew beer. I had brewed a few times before that, but had no idea what I was doing. Jeff is a master brewer, and his advise and hints instantly shot my brewing results up to a new level. Jeff, with his wife Carita, built the house that they live in almost entire by themselves (in Blue, Texas), and the place is beautiful. Jeff is also just a plain, old, ordinary good man. A man whose instincts and actions on social justice have inspired me, whose kindness to those around him has awed me, and whose friendship has improved me.

Last night Jeff Byers was in a car accident. He is in a coma. That is just about all I know at the moment. Except I know, as much as I know anything else, that I want him to get better.

The best governement

I like philosophy, especially arguments about philosophy. And if you throw in a little religion or politics, things really get fun. But in the end, I’m a practical kind of guy. I can’t be bothered with any philosophical musing that can’t be brought to bare on how I live my life. Here is a very simple example.

There is an oft repeated quote about the size of government: “That government is best which governs least,” attributed to Thomas Jefferson though it appears in none of his writings. What exactly does this mean? The least amount of government is no government; thus, it literally extols anarchy. Assuming that most who repeat this quote are not promoting anarchy (it is, after all, a part of the Republican Party oath), what is meant by this phrase? It is akin to saying “I believe in small government” without having to be bothered with defining what is meant by “small”. Thus, it claims to represent a philosophy, but without committing the adherent to any course of action. If no government and an all consuming government are both bad options (and surely all rational people must think that they are), there must be some optimum size of government, so that more or less government than this optimum is detrimental to the general welfare of the populous. It should be our goal to find the optimal level of government. How is this optimum to be determined? How, in fact, is the size of government to be measured? What criteria are best used when defining the benefits and detriments of government? These questions are not answered, and in fact not even asked, when one simply repeats the fine sounding but meaningless phrase “That government is best which governs least.”

Who invented pellicles?

A question to the lithography blogosphere: who invented pellicles for photomask protection?

Lithographers have been practicing safe exposures – with masks wrapped in a thin sheet of plastic to protect them from particles – since before my time. What is the first reference to pellicles in the literature? Who was the first to use them? The earliest reference that I have found is Ron Hershel, “Pellicle protection of integrated circuit (IC) masks”, SPIE Vol. 275 (1981) pp. 23 – 28.

Greetings from Hong Kong

It is not the shortest business trip I have been on, and it is not the longest. But somehow it feels like both.

After spending about 24 hours to get here from Austin, I arrived in Hong Kong on Thursday night. I’m here for a trial – I’m an expert witness in the case. But when I checked into the hotel, a note was waiting for me – the two sides had settled, so there was nothing for me to do. I changed my flight back to Saturday, and another 24 hours of travel time later I will be home. Thus, a very long, short trip.

But I did have a half-day free, and remarkably I managed to find a brew pub (go figure). The Hong Kong Brew House was in Lan Kwai Fong, the bar district of Hong Kong. While none of the beers were outstanding, they were all good (or at least acceptable). And you have to like it that someone in Hong Kong is trying.

The North Pole

I have a good friend, Erica Lloyd, who is a science writer. She’s on her way to the North Pole, accompanying a science expedition to explore the sea floor up there. I’ve been following the daily photo updates on the mission’s website: http://divediscover.whoi.edu/expedition11/daily/index.html (apparently there is internet access on the North Pole – who’d of figured?). Fascinating stuff – I’m envious of Erica. She’s actually seeing the North Pole while there is still ice.

BTW, someday you’ll be able to hear Erica’s reports on the NPR show Radiolab.

Climate versus Weather

The topic of climate change is, naturally enough, a hot one right now. But most people who are not climate scientists have a hard time grasping even the meaning of the word climate, let alone the implications of climate change. In conversations with friends and acquaintances, climate is invariably confused with weather (one of my favorite sayings when the temperature outside is too cold for my liking: “Where is global warming when you need it?”)

Climate and weather are very, very, very weakly related. Here is my favorite analogy: The weather is like how much change is in your pocket. The climate is like how much money you will earn in a life time. Of course these two quantities must be related in some way, since I did earn the money that’s in my pocket. But on any given day there is essentially no correlation between the two. And if I want to estimate my future earning potential, I won’t go counting the change in my pocket for clues. So let’s wise up and stop asking the weather man for his opinion on climate change, and don’t even bother asking the climate scientist if he thinks it will be a hot one this weekend. Besides, I live in Austin, so I already know the answer to that question.

New paper published today

An article I wrote, “The Future of Semiconductor Lithography: After Optical, What Next?“, has just been published. It is available online at the Future Fab International website.

A definite advantage of being unemployed (er, I mean, a Gentleman Scientist) is that I can pontificate without worry as to who I offend. And this article porbably has a little bit to offend just about everyone in the next generation lithography community.

Chris, where have you been?

I haven’t been blogging a lot lately.

This is obvious to the 2.5 people that regularly check my blog to see what I have to say. But I have a reason (there is always a reason): Since the first of the year till the end of May I was extremely focused on one thing – finishing my textbook on optical lithography. I spent the month of June on the French Rivera on vacation, but more on that later. I’d like to talk about that pesky book first.

The title is Fundamental Principles of Optical Lithography: The Science of Microfabrication. Quite a mouthful. It is my Opus Magnum – just about everything I have learned about optical lithography over the last 24 years, including quite a bit of new, unpublished research. Amazingly, I’ve spent 17 of those 24 years writing this book! And for most of those years it has seemed that I was further away from finishing each year that went by (a testament to how fast the field changes). I finally realized that near full time effort was required to finish the book, which is what I have been (almost) doing for the last two years.

A few statistics about the book:

Number of pages: about 600
Number of chapters: 10
Number of figures: 272
Number of equations: 973
Number of homework problems: 132

It’s not exactly beach reading.

The publisher is John Wiley & Sons, and the book should come out towards the end of November. If it is a best seller (as far as such textbooks are concerned), I won’t even come close to making minimum wage for the time I spent writing it. But of course, nobody writes such a book for the money. It’s about the glory.