Have you ever been reading through my textbook Fundamental Principles of Optical Lithography and thought “Boy, if I only had a set of Matlab exercises to do, I could really learn this stuff!”? Well if a laboratory manual full of Matlab problems is the only thing keeping you from learning optical lithography, your wait is over! Kevin Berwick of the Dublin Institute of Technology has been teaching a lithography course using my textbook and has been assigning Matlab problems to his class to help them get at the details of the topic. He has now collected up those problems and published a book called Optical Lithography Modelling with MATLAB®, Laboratory Manual to accompany Fundamental Principles of Optical Lithography, by Chris Mack. And if that is not enough to put any lithographer in a good mood, this book is available to be downloaded free! Click here for more information. A great Christmas present for that hard to shop for lithographer!
All posts by Chris
Quote of the Day
Science vs. Engineering:
“Science is about understanding the origins, nature, and behavior of the universe and all it contains; engineering is about solving problems by rearranging the stuff of the world to make new things.”
– Henry Petroski, IEEE Spectrum, December 2010
Acronym of the Day
BGO – blinding glimpse of the obvious
(From a meeting today, where I heard approximately 50 acronyms of unknown meaning.)
My name in Kanji
A few years ago, while we were drinking in a basement beer bar in Yokohama, some Japanese friends decided to figure out how to spell my last name in Kanji. Generally, a foreigner writing his name in Japanese would use the Katakana alphabet. But occasionally foreigners will “spell” their name in Kanji, the Chinese characters that Japanese use for many of their words. The goal is to match the sounds made by the characters to the name (for me, the two sounds are ma + ku). But since the Kanji have meaning as well as sound, and there are usually several Kanji with the same sound, one can also choose the Kanji to provide a meaning that in some way reminds you of the person. After some discussion (that I didn’t understand) and some beer (that I did), a final spelling was agreed upon. Here is my name in Kanji. I like it.
Lithography and Politics
Today is election day in the United States – finally. I’m sick of hearing about the state of politics in America, and am just looking forward to moving on. But there has been one bit of political news that I have found intriguing. This fall there was a lithographer who ran for Congress – in Brazil. His name is Ricardo Vieira, and I have been in email contact with him over the years on various lithography topics. When he first started campaigning, he told me, “We don’t have any representative from the scientific workers class into our Congress, so I decided to be a candidate.” He played up his experience in Nanotechnology to promote his campaign, even creating what might be the world’s smallest campaign slogan – “Vote Ricardo Vieira” printed so small that it is completely visible through the eye of a needle.
For pictures and more information, click here.
A Big iPhone
The other day my three-year-old daughter Anna saw an Apple iPad for the first time. After seeing if for just a few seconds, she looked at me and said “Why does he have that big iPhone?” While lots of people have talked about the proper way to think about the iPad in the spectrum of computing products, I think my daughter got it right at first glance. It is a big iPhone, only without the phone.
Quote of the Day
“Red is the color of love.”
– Anna Mack, my just-turned-three year old daughter, when asked what color sprinkles she wanted on her birthday cake.
Gorgeous George
I am now back in Austin, after spending the summer working for Dow Chemical (the Shipley photoresist group) in Marlborough, MA. Besides enjoying the much more pleasant temperatures of that northeastern clime, I had the great pleasure of getting to know (or know better) many fine folks at Dow (most especially my supervisor Jim Thackerary, whom I have known for 20 years, but now know of his favorite curse after a bad golf shot). One of the people I was glad to interact with was George Barclay, the R&D head for Dow Advanced Materials. Thus, I was a bit amused when, on the flight home to Austin, I opened up my current issue of Scientific American and there, staring at me thoughtfully from the inside cover, was an overly artistic rendering of that very same George Barclay. Dow is running an ad campaign to bring the “Human Element” of Dow to life. Thanks to the talents of the famous (and very expensive) photographer Albert Watson, Dr. Barclay has earned his new moniker: Gorgeous George.
Quote of the day
A scene that I witnessed yesterday:
Congressman Barney Frank to (unnamed Intel litho engineer): “Your fly is down.”
Franco Cerrina dies at age 62
Like many lithographers who have been at this business for a while, I frequently ran into Franco Cerrina, longtime professor at the University of Wisconsin, at conferences (mostly the 3-beam conferences). He was friendly, smart, hard working, and one was always glad to see him and for the chance to talk to him. He worked for many years on X-ray lithography, and has more recently applied himself to using nanofabrication techniques in biology. I recently reread some of his line-edge roughness papers, since he and his students did some of the early work in that area. He moved to Boston University last year to head up the EE department. Since I am spending the summer working in Boston, I had planned to call him up to visit him, to see what he was up to. It came as a shock to learn that he died in a photonics lab at BU on Monday. He was 62, rode his bike in to work every day, and apparently was in good health. More details can be found at:
http://www.bu.edu/ece/2010/07/13/professor-franco-cerrina-ece-chair-dies/
http://www.engr.wisc.edu/news/headlines/2010/Jul12.html
He will be missed by the lithography community.