When SEMATECH first started its immersion workshops, these meeting proved immensely useful and important. Bringing together nearly everyone who was starting to take immersion lithography seriously, the interaction and discussion jump-started tool, material and process development and consolidated the growing momentum behind this technology. By the time the 6th (and last) immersion symposium was held here on Thursday and Friday, the urgency and excitement was long gone. It was just another lithography meeting (which is why the organizers announced that this was the last of the series). It was a good meeting, though, with reasonable attendance (about 150 people, half the attendance of the 3-day EUV symposium that preceded it) and some good papers. But there are lots of lithography conferences (too many to go to them all) and this one didn’t offer anything special (except Prague).

Most of the talks were double patterning related, as one might expect, with an emphasis on “litho-process-litho-etch” approaches (a generalization of “litho-freeze-litho-etch”) and “negative develop” (using a traditional positive 193 resist in such a way to get a negative image). There has definitely been progress in making these approaches more practical from a manufacturing perspective, and though some work remains they look very promising. There was very little on sidewall spacer approaches, but maybe that reflects the fact that this technology is already in production at Flash manufacturers.

Aside: The Miss Czech Republic beauty contest was held in the room next to the immersion symposium on Thursday through Saturday. And though burly badge-checkers kept us lithographers out of the festivities, there were plenty of beauty and the geek moments. A leggy and impossibly thin blonde walks by, stopping five lithographers in their tracks, jaws on the ground; lots of wide-eyed “did you see that?” comments.

I spent an extra day in the Czech Republic and went Saturday to Plzen, a town 100 km southwest of Prague that is the birthplace of Pilsner beer. The Pilsner style of lager gets its name from Pilsner Urquell, a beer first brewed in Plzen in 1842. I took a tour of the brewery (highly recommended), where their recently decommissioned 100-year-old brew house was converted into a sort-of beer theme park. Modernization of the plant over the last 10 years has made it state-of-the-art (reflecting, no doubt, investment by their owner SAB Miller). That freed up the old buildings to be dedicated to beer tourism. Much fun, especially the beer tasting at the end.