Michael Watts

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Mike Watts is a contributing writer at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Cymer’s EUV Team Has An Exciting Few Months
By Michael Watts - 14 Mar, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Michael P.C. Watts At SPIE Advanced Lithography, Cymer announced some serious progress in EUV source development, one of several highlights. The latest results provided 40W of power in runs over 8 hours that mimicked full productions conditions including dose control. As far as I can tell, 40w translates to around 30 - 300 mm wafers an hour. The Cymer source uses a CO2 laser with 3 ampli... » read more

Extreme sources, block copolymers, and resist polishing at SPIE Advanced Lithography.
By Michael Watts - 04 Mar, 2013 - Comments: 0

by Michael P.C. Watts Lots to talk about from SPIE Advance Lithography Conference this year; EUV power, multi-beam systems, double patterning, and imprint. I thought I would pick up some highlights here, and then come back and talk about them in detail over the next few weeks. One of the extreme sources was the paper from Cymer/ASML on EUV sources . Their paper showed performance, at prod... » read more

Optical interconnect for flexible electronics
By Michael Watts - 23 Feb, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Michael P.C. Watts At Photonics West, Dow Corning and IBM disclosed a photo-patternable optical interconnect materials set that can support 25 cm interconnect lengths, can be part of a flexible PCB, and survive the industry standard “Telcordia” environmental stress test. The idea of optical interconnect has been circulating as soon as it was realized that chip to chip communication... » read more

Pyramids Are Not Just For Pharaohs
By Michael Watts - 17 Feb, 2013 - Comments: 1

By Mike Watts There were 3 different applications for pyramid patterns this year at Photonics West in San Francisco; improved LED’s, improved absorbers and single quantum dot devices. This not the first time the ancients have come to the rescue of nano-technology, a couple of years ago we had nano-menhirs. Several groups talked about improving LED’s through pyramids. A Samsung team grew... » read more

Printed electronics – an IDTech update
By Michael Watts - 06 Dec, 2012 - Comments: 0

It’s the season for IDTech’s conferences, so time for another look at the Printed Electronics (PE) opportunity. At the Europe conference this year, the IDTech’s team drew a distinction between past successes with simple screen printed products such as membrane keyboards and the current thrust for higher functionality. Companies such as HP Labs, PARC, and PolyIC, are building active transi... » read more

Patterned media – getting closer
By Michael Watts - 11 Sep, 2012 - Comments: 0

Imprint watchers are watching and waiting for news that patterned media has come of age….the question is … is there a technical barrier, or are manufacturers just waiting for the existing solution to run out of steam ? When I ask my contacts “if your boss said I want to buy a factory, can I pull the switch”…. the consistent answer is “we are not ready yet”. Reading and writing ... » read more

A customizable imaging spectrometer – otherwise known as a “hyperspatial imager”
By Michael Watts - 16 Jul, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Michael P C Watts A camera that can detect any color even IR and UV would be very useful for any number of inspection or detection tasks….. a “hyperspatial imager”. The classic RGB color camera is limited by the RGB color filters which detect a limited range of visible wavelengths, known as the “color gamut” of the camera. At Photonics West 2012 in San Francisco, a team from Ime... » read more

You Nits – a different way to think about nano-lithography
By Michael Watts - 04 Jun, 2012 - Comments: 0

Once in a while, it is fun to go and listen to what the IC guys are up too…its jaw dropping stuff. The trouble with reeling off the capability in industry standard units is that it is impossible to put in any perspective. Units are important, or as my physics teacher used to say when we made a mistake “You nits”. Translation…in England a nitwit is a stupid person ! The 22 nm node ... » read more

Incumbency rules! – in lithography as elsewhere.
By Michael Watts - 12 Apr, 2012 - Comments: 0

by Michael P.C. Watts If double patterning gets established is it just a stop gap until EUV ? This was the entertaining subject at coffee with my editor at semimd (the great thing about writing a free blog is that you get to buy your own coffee when you meet – and yes, we need to find something more fun to talk about !) We were discussing the latest in lithography that were the subject ... » read more

Advanced Semiconductor Device Lithography – pushing the optical limit for lithography
By Michael Watts - 11 Mar, 2012 - Comments: 0

Michael P. C. Watts Given that the alternatives all have challenges, it looks to me that optical lithography will have to deliver the 16 nm and most likely the 11 nm node. In my last blog, I reviewed the news from SPIE’s Advanced Lithography conference on all the non-optical solutions. My conclusion was that in the best case, EUV and imprint could just make the 11 nm node but both have out... » read more

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