This was a day of full technical meetings. In the morning I sat in on the optical lithography conference where I saw better-than-expected progress on double patterning. I was particularly impressed with the quality of the litho “freeze” images. In the afternoon I sat in on the resist conference, where I was particularly unimpressed with the lack of progress in the understanding of line edge roughness. This is not a good sign.

I didn’t attend the EUV session of the emerging conference, though I saw the crowd of people flowing out of the door. Several people asked me what I thought of the AMD/ASML/IBM paper showing a working device with a layer made using EUV lithography. Since I didn’t see the paper, I couldn’t comment on it, though I was immediately reminded of a paper I saw many years ago, where IBM demonstrated a device with one critical layer imaged with proximity X-ray lithography. Shortly after that device demonstration, IBM canceled their X-ray program.

In the early evening, there was a panel discussion called “Future Projection Lithography: Optical or EUV?” Since I already knew the answer, I skipped the panel and went straight to the hospitality suites.

The hospitality suite scene seemed subdued this year. Everything was low-key (and occasionally dead) at normally hoping parties. Still, it was nice to wander around and socialize – one of the key benefits of this symposium. I ended the evening at the KLA-Tencor “bathtub” party put on by the PROLITH team. Good times, and good memories evoked. Packing it in at 11pm, I tried not to think of the 7am breakfast meeting I had scheduled for the next day – that’s life at SPIE.