For me Sunday is\nalways about teaching. I\u2019ve been\nteaching at the start of this conference every year since 1990 (except the year\nI was too sick to leave my hotel room \u2013 a rotavirus as it turns out). Alas, my good friend and co-instructor John Petersen\nwas unable to attend the conference at the last minute (responsibilities for his\nnew AttoLab at imec have intervened), so I reverted to my old ways of teaching\n8 hours by myself. That is definitely a\nyoung person\u2019s calling, though I survived with my feet a little tired and my voice\nmostly intact. My course\u2019s attendance was\nabout the same as last year, but the biggest course, Introduction to\nMicrolithography, had only about 50% of the registered students show up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Early indications are that conference attendance will be down about 15% (300 people) compared to last year, with about half of that drop coming from Asia and most of the other half from Intel (only authors and conference chairs have been allowed to come from Intel).\u00a0 I found out that another large company has canceled their hospitality suite \u2013 ASML.\u00a0 That leaves a few resist companies, Qoniac, Mentor Graphics, and of course Fractilia carrying on with their evening events (I\u2019m probably missing some in this list).\u00a0 That is definitely enough to have fun every night of the week.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I await the\nbeginning of the conference, I am anticipating a few things. Developments in Directed Self Assembly (DSA)\nhave been somewhat muted here the last few years, giving conference attendees\nthe possible impression that interest has been waning. But rumors are spreading that several\ncompanies are on the verge of high-volume manufacturing with DSA. The quiet seems to be due to commercialization,\nnot lack of interest. I\u2019m not sure that\nwe\u2019ll hear more about those plans this week, but I\u2019ll listening for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, I have realized\nthat my personal transition is complete. \nI no longer call myself a lithographer. \nI am a metrologist, and I am proud of it. My conference of focus will be the metrology\nconference, and I find everything about metrology incredibly interesting! I still know how to think like a\nlithographer, and I still work hard to adopt a stochastic mindset \u2013\nmetrologists must steep themselves in the technology of what they measure. I\u2019ll be following the stochastic conference\ntrack wherever it leads me, knowing that without good metrology none of us will\nhave the data needed to make good decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For me Sunday is always about teaching. I\u2019ve been teaching at the start of this conference every year since 1990 (except the year I was too sick to leave my hotel room \u2013 a rotavirus as it turns out). Alas, my good friend and co-instructor John Petersen was unable to attend the conference at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microlithography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":613,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions\/613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}