The week before the annual SPIE Advanced Lithography Symposium is always a busy one for me, but this year it is particularly so.\u00a0 It\u2019s not just because I am giving a short course and three conference presentations.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not because I am coauthor on four other talks (that\u2019s a total of seven papers \u2013 yikes!).\u00a0 No, the real reason I am way too busy this week is that yesterday I launched my new company \u2013 Fractilia.<\/p>\n
Seventeen years ago I sold my lithography simulation company FINLE Technologies, and after five years at KLA-Tencor I settled into the life of the \u201cGentleman Scientist\u201d.\u00a0 My goal was to contribute to the science and practice of lithography through my research, teaching, and writing, all the while looking into the problems that I thought were the most interesting.\u00a0 For the last 10 years that \u201cmost interesting problem\u201d has been stochastic-induced roughness.\u00a0 It is an incredibly interesting, fun, and important topic, and I have written 25 papers since 2009 that I hope have contributed something to our community\u2019s understanding of this vexing problem.\u00a0 My goal has been to help transform our understanding of stochastics and roughness, so that we can better tackle the problem of reducing it.<\/p>\n
Recently, though, I\u2019ve come to understand that the best way for me to realize my vision of making a positive impact on the industry is to commercialize my ideas in software.\u00a0 So I\u2019ve teamed up with my old partner from the FINLE days, Ed Charrier, to start a new company (Fractilia) and to introduce a new product (MetroLER).<\/p>\n
The goal of Fractilia is to bring rigor, accuracy, and ease-of-use to the analysis of stochastic-induced roughness in semiconductor manufacturing and process development.\u00a0 Fractilia will deliver something I think is currently lacking in the industry:\u00a0 accurate and repeatable analysis of SEM images to extract the true, unbiased roughness behavior of wafer features.\u00a0 I think the industry needs this product.\u00a0 Of course, the market will tell me if I am right.<\/p>\n
So, as I have for the last several years, I\u2019ll be giving papers next week on various ways in which the measurement of pattern roughness can go wrong. \u00a0I\u2019ll complain about errors in the SEM and how they hide the true roughness behavior on the wafer.\u00a0 I\u2019ll moan about the statistical difficulties of sampling, aliasing, and biases in our measurements.\u00a0 But this year I\u2019ll do more than complain \u2013 I\u2019ll do something about it.<\/p>\n
For the interested reader, here is a recent press article on the new company:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/semiengineering.com\/fractilia-pattern-roughness-metrology\/<\/a><\/p>\n