My favorite phrase of the conference: “Double half-pitch”. Now, one might think that this was just a silly way of saying “pitch” (and as we found out last year, the pitch is not necessarily twice the half-pitch), but no. The speaker meant “quarter-pitch”, as if “half” was a mathematical operator rather than a fraction. Even scientists and engineers, trained in precision, can become experts at obfuscation.

The Advanced Lithography Symposium is cyclic. Every few years, some good idea or ideas capture the imagination of the community. These are “innovation” years. Then, for the next several years, people work out the details as they either embrace, or reject, those ideas. Such “development” years are more common, and often result in industry consensus around various technologies. This year seems to be a development year. Double pattern is looking more and more practical, and certainly the memory makers have already decided to use it. Logic makers are still holding out hope for high-index materials and higher numerical apertures. LuAg is making progress, but absorbance is still an order of magnitude away from its target. The last order of magnitude improvement is always the hardest (something I think the EUV folks will soon learn), so the use of LuAg is not a forgone conclusion. Second generation fluids seem to be becoming practical, though third generation fluids look even further away than I had expected. “Development” years are not as exciting as “innovation” years at this conference, but that’s OK. Too much excitement can be a bad thing.

My biggest fear for continued lithographic progress remains line-edge roughness. Progress in understanding LER is far too slow for my likes. I’m surprised and disappointed in the limited attention that this problem is receiving compared to tool development issues.

A Reminder: At 9pm on Thursday, friends of Jeff will raise a glass in his honor. If you are at Gordon Biersch, we’ll do it together. If not, please do it wherever you are.