Prof. Grant Willson
Seminar and Reception
Friday, April 26, 2019, 1-2:30 PM CDT
Title: Materials for High Resolution Imaging Applications
Presenter: Professor C. Grant Willson, Departments of Chemistry and Chem. Engr.
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 TI have fallen by the wayside. For almost 40 years, we have participated continuously in efforts to improve the resolution of photolithography, the process that has enabled the production of all of today’s microelectronic devices. Unfortunately, this process has now reached physical limits. Efforts to push that technology to provide still higher resolution by the historical paths of exposure wavelength 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?? No more Moore??
We are still striving to develop new materials and new processes that offer an opportunity to continue this scaling. We will briefly describe some new materials that enable generating of structures with dimensions well below the limits of current lithographic patterning processes. This includes a new resist design that embodies “chemical amplification” (quantum efficiency >1) without employing a catalyst. These materials provide, for the first time, gain without blur. They are based on new polymers that depolymerize “unzip” upon exposure to radiation. This design approach increases resolution by limiting the image bias that derives from mass transport of the catalyst. Finally, we will describe the results of our progress in attempts to exploit block co-polymer chemistry to generate very small patterns of the sort that are useful for lithography. This so called, Directed Self Assembly approach to patterning has now afforded well-formed 50 angstrom wide lines and spaces. These very small structures offer hope for still more Moore!
C. Grant Willson joined the faculties of the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin in 1993. He is the Rashid Engineering Regents Chair in the Cockrell School of Engineering. He received his BS and Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and an MS degree in Organic Chemistry from San Diego State University. He came to the University of Texas from his position 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 Univ., Long Beach and the Univ. of California, San Diego.
His research can be characterized as the design and synthesis of functional organic materials with emphasis on materials for microelectronics. These include monomeric and polymeric liquid crystalline materials, polymeric non-linear optical materials, novel photoresist materials, etc.
He is a member of the ACS, APS, SPIE, SPE, AAAS, ASEE, and Sigma Xi and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals in polymer chemistry and materials science and is co-author of over 300 journal publications. He is editor and author of several books and co-inventor on more than 25 issued patents. Among his numerous honors are the ACS Award in Polymer Chemistry (2018), SIA Researcher Award (2015), The Japan Prize (2013), Inventor of the Year, The University of Texas at Austin (2012), Fellow, Materials Research Society (2012), Inaugural Fellow of the American Chemical Society (2009), the Gordon E. Moore Medal (2009), and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2007).
The Venue:
NHB, 1.720 is just inside from the sculpture: “Monochrome for Austin”, the large assembly of aluminum canoes.
