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UNM
Kicks off $5.4M Optical Nanolithography Research Program As industry phases out fundamental research, other institutions must take up the slack to avoid future threats to our prosperity and security. One such institution is the Center for High Technology Materials (CTHM) at the University of New Mexico, which kicked off a $5.4 million, five year program on "deep sub-wavelength optical nanolithography" with a symposium this month in Albuquerque, NM. Funded by the Army Research Office (ARO) as a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI), the purpose of the program is to extend optical lithography techniques to the fundamental limit, expected to be below 30nm for the critical dimension.Lithography is only one of several concentration areas for the CTHM, which employs 60 graduate students and teaches semiconductor processing to 20 or so undergraduates each year. Once the equipment gets installed in the 6600 sq. ft. cleanroom, CTHM will train 100 undergraduate engineers and 300 junior-college level technicians in collaboration with a nearby Technical Vocational Institute, according to Paul Fleury, dean of engineering. "Obtaining the MURI contract is a recognition of the high quality of the program at CTHM," he noted. In his opening remarks, Dwight Woolard, ARO Program Manager, observed that the purpose of the program was to develop "novel nanotechnology, not just IC chips." Nevertheless, silicon technology will be the focus and the IC industry will have a large contingent on the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) which advises the ARO on program oversight. Robert Trew, director of research in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Science and Technology observed that the MURI program was funded with "pure research money, expected to push the frontiers of knowledge outward, not supplement nearer-term programs, which are industry's responsibility."Still, it is difficult to imagine an optical lithography program more speculative than the industry's pursuit of 157nm lithography, where no known resin is transparent enough to form the basis of a successful resist. The two examples presented at the kickoff meeting were Imaging Interferometric Lithography (IIL), which achieves the full spatial bandwidth limit allowed by light of a given wavelength, and nonlinear lithography, where quantum rather than optical interferences allow even finer resolution. The latter program will be pursued at UCLA by Eli Yablonovich, coordinating with Steven Brueck, the program director at CTHM.
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