Materials for High Resolution Imaging Applications

Time: Wednesday, November 15, 2017 - 10:30am - 11:30am
Type: Seminar Series
Presenter: C. Grant Willson; Departments of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Rashid Engineering Regent’s Chair - The University of Texas at Austin
Room/Office: Becton 035
Location:
Becton Seminar Room
15 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511
United States

 

The Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering and The Goizueta Foundation Present The Barnett F. Dodge Distinguished Lecture in Chemical Engineering

"Materials for High Resolution Imaging Applications"

C. Grant Willson
Departments of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
Rashid Engineering Regent's Chair
The University of Texas at Austin

Abstract:
During the past several decades, there has been a continuing and nearly frantic effort on the part of the microelectronics manufacturers to make ever smaller devices. The rate of device scaling is described by the famous "Moore's Law". Companies that cannot keep pace with Moore's Law quickly disappear from the market place and sadly many with famous names like Siemens, Motorola, Sony and Texas Instruments have fallen by the wayside. Photolithography, the process that has enabled the production of all of today's microelectronic devices has now reached physical resolution limits. Efforts to push that technology to provide still higher resolution by the historical paths of exposure wave length reduction, increasing the numerical aperture of the projection lens and reduction in the Raleigh constant have been abandoned. Is this the end? Can device scaling continue??

We are striving to develop new materials and processes that offer an opportunity to continue this scaling. We will briefly describe three different approaches to ever smaller structures. First, we have now found a way to break one of the physical limits, "Raleigh's Rule". According to classical physics, it is impossible to print with a Raleigh constant below 0.25. Through a combination of some interesting photochemistry and careful kinetic control, we have managed to print grating patterns well below the Raleigh limit. In this process, exposure of a special photoresist with a mask having a grating with pitch of L0 produces developed grating pattern with pitch of L0/2. Achieving this end required the design and synthesis of a new class of photo-base generators. The synthesis and characterization of these materials will be presented along with a description of the process design including its advantages and limitations.

We will also present the results of some recent work that demonstrates a new resist design that has "chemical amplification" (quantum efficiency >1) without employing a catalyst. These formulations are based on new polymers with low ceiling temperatures that depolymerize upon exposure to radiation. This approach offers increases resolution by limiting the image bias that derives from mass transport of catalyst. The synthesis and characterization of the materials will be described together with the results of the first functional tests. Finally, we will describe the recent progress on attempts to exploit block co-polymer chemistry to generate very small patterns of the sort that are useful for lithography. This approach to patterning has now afforded well formed 50 angstrom wide lines and spaces. These very small structures offer hope for still more Moore!

Bio:
Dr. C. Grant Willson is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin where he holds the Rashid Engineering Regent’s Chair. He received both his B.S. and Ph.D. in organic chemistry from The University of California, Berkley and his M.S., in organic chemistry, from San Diego State University. He joined the faculty of The University of Texas at Austin in 1993. Prior to joining the university, Dr. Willson worked at IBM for 17 years as an IBM Fellow and Manager of the Polymer Science and Technology area at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. He joined IBM after serving on the faculties of California State University, Long Beach and the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Willson is the co-inventor of more than 40 issued U.S. patents and co-author of more than 400 publications. He has advised more than 75 PhD Candidates at the University of Texas.

Dr. Willson’s research work is focused on the design and synthesis of functional organic materials with emphasis on organic materials for microelectronics. His work is supported by grants from both government and industry. His research group includes graduate and undergraduate students enrolled in both the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Departments. He was a co-founder of Molecular Imprints, Inc., an Austin firm that employed more than 100 people.

In addition to being an IBM Fellow, Dr. Willson is a Fellow of ACS, MRS, PMSE AND SPIE. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the ACS, APS, SPIE, SPE, AAAS, ASEE, ECS and Sigma Xi. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals and is associate editor of ACS Nano. Dr. Willson has received a number of awards for his research, including the Arthur Doolittle Award, the Chemistry of Materials Award, the Carothers Award, The Cooperative Research in Polymer Science and Engineering Award, and Applied Polymer Science Award and the Heroes in Chemistry Award from the American Chemical Society; the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientists Award from the Federal Republic of Germany, the Technical Excellence Award and Aristotle Award from SRC, the Malcolm E. Pruitt Award from the CRC, the Monie A. Ferst Award from Sigma Xi and the Billy and Claude R. Hocott Distinguished Centennial Engineering Research Award from Cockrell School of Engineering. He also received the National Academy of Sciences Award from Chemistry in Service to Society and he was the recipient of the Dehon Little Award form the AIChE, the Zernike Award from the SPIE, the SEMI North America Award and the Gordon Moore Medal from the ECS. He was presented with the National Medal for Technology and Innovation by the President of the United States and he shared the 2013 Japan Prize.

Wednesday, November 15, 2017
10:30 a.m. MC 035
Becton Seminar Room
15 Prospect Street (another entrance: 10 Hillhouse Ave.)
Breakfast Reception at 9:45 a.m.

This series of lectures is named in honor of B.F.Dodge. He was born on November 29, 1895 in Akron, Ohio, and obtained his BS in ChE from MIT in 1917. Before joining the Yale Department of Chemical Engineering, Mr. Dodge worked as a chemical engineer with DuPont, first in the area of chemical explosives. In 1919, he was transferred to the main office as Assistant to the Manager of the Inspection/Standards Division, Chemical Department. From 1920 to 1922 Mr. Dodge was with Lewis Recovery Corporation, Boston, Mass.

In 1921 he became a Lecturer in Chemical Engineering at Harvard University, and from 1922-1925, the period of his Harvard PhD dissertation research on the thermodynamics of liquefied air, he also lectured at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He came to Yale in 1925 as Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1930 and, in 1935, to Professor. In 1931 he became Chairman of the Yale ChE Department, a post he held for thirty years.

In addition to his leadership roles at Yale, Professor Dodge served on many committees and was elected President of AIChE in 1955. He held 7 U.S. Patents, and published approximately 85 papers in technical journals, numerous book reviews, as well as one now classic book, Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics, in 1944 (McGraw Hill.)

The Barnett F. Dodge Lectures are made possible by The Goizueta Foundation through a gift to Yale University, School of Engineering & Applied Science, Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering.