The past ten years have been hard on the magazine publishing industry, with 2008 a particularly bad year. No one’s quite sure how web-based publishing will affect print in the end, but there have already been many casualties. Last month one of my favorite trade publications, Microlithography World, bit the paper-shredding dust. MLW was the brain-child of Sid Marshall, the editor of Solid State Technology (a magazine founded by his father, Sam Marshall) until that magazine’s purchase by PennWell. First published in January, 1992, MLW was thin and ran quarterly, but it filled a void in the publishing world, which previously didn’t offer a dedicated space for lithography publications.

As the magazine was launched, Sid contacted me about publishing a paper in this new quarterly. Instead, I proposed a more radical idea: I would write a short tutorial paper for every edition of the magazine. Sid agreed, and in January, 1993 the first “Lithography Tutor” article appeared. Here is the introduction I wrote for that first article:

“Welcome to The Lithography Tutor, a new regular feature of Microlithography World. As the name implies, the purpose of this column is to present lithography information in a tutorial format. Each issue of Microlithography World will carry a two to three page edition of this continuing series on the basic principles of optical lithography. To give you a brief outline of what is to come in the next several issues, we’ll begin by studying optics. How is an image formed by a projection optical system (stepper or scanner)? What is the influence of wavelength, numerical aperture, coherence, illumination? Then, we will examine how this image propagates through the photoresist (including absorption and standing waves) and exposes the resist. Finally, the properties of development will be discussed. From here, we can begin discussing lithography as a system, define what is meant by lithographic quality, and look for ways to optimize our lithography system to maximize its quality. All this in two to three pages per issue! I’m not sure how long it will take to get through all of these topics, but I’ll certainly have fun writing this column. I hope you will enjoy reading it.”

And I did have fun writing my column. I looked forward to it each quarter, since it forced me to figure out not just how to present information, but how to explain it. It was also a great pleasure working with the editor who took over for Sid, Marc Levenson (a.k.a. “M. David”).

In the spring of 1996 the column was renamed The Lithography Expert – it seems the publisher liked the idea of having an expert write its articles rather than a mere tutor (I guess that means I was promoted, though my pay remained the same: nothing). When the last MLW came out in November 2008, I had written a total of 63 Tutor/Expert articles – quite a run! Much of the information and explanations found in those articles made it into my textbook, Fundamental Principles of Optical Lithography, so that even as MLW disappears, the spirit of the Lithography Tutor/Expert lives on. Still, I’ll miss the deadline pressure to find another interesting lithography topic amenable to a good 2-page explanation. Maybe I’ll have to write another book to fill that need in me to explain.