Willson led research groups at IBM, and later at UT Austin, that were responsible for several major breakthroughs in lithography during the last 20 years. Other faculty on the team include Dr. S.V. Sreenivasan, associate professor of mechanical engineering, Dr. John Ekerdt, chairman of UT Austin's department of chemical engineering, and Dr. Jack Wolfe, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Houston. It is essentially unlimited in terms of resolution, unlike current tools, and it is potentially very cost effective. While laboratories worldwide have many adaptations of imprint lithography under study, Step and Flash Imprint Lithography is the only imprint process based on reactions that occur at room temperature and low pressure, Willson said. The success of the semiconductor manufacturing industry is, to a significant extent, the result of learning how to make circuits smaller.
Smaller devices are inherently faster and cheaper to produce.
The step in the chip manufacturing process that controls the device size is microlithography. The ability to print ever-smaller device structures in the photoresist requires ever more sophisticated cameras called projection printers. The most advanced projection printers use very sophisticated lasers as a light source, and they have lenses with as many 30 individual elements. These lenses are made of highly specialized glass and weigh nearly one ton. The template is brought into contact with a layer of two thin polymer films coated on the wafer surface by traditional means.