Nanoimprint Lithography

An anonymous submitter writes "According to BBC News, researchers at Princeton have developed a die-stamp method for chip fabs. The Princeton site claims they've got to 10nm already. The professor in charge has told BBC News Online that they're '20 years ahead of Moore's Law.' Dubious claims aside, it looks like a handy way to bring down prices even if it doesn't improve ultimate top speed."

Comments

But how do you make the mold?

[joshv]

This sounds great, but how do they make the mold, what kind of wear and tear is the mold subject to? My guess is that one of these 'nano-imprint' molds is not going to last all that long.

I am assuming they are relying on something like electron beam lithography to create the imprint mold, certainly this would be a cost/time improvement over direct e-beam litho, but it all depends on longevity of the molds.

-josh

Environmentally friendly!

[pokeyburro]

Take note of that third section: no nasty chemicals, they claim. If their claim holds, a company using this tech could make a lot of political capital from it.

Natural questions arise: just how dirty is the current process? Will the details of the method really prove to be as clean as they say?

Re:Important Issue

[YourGarbageMan]

The same way they make phase shift masks for optical lithography. They use an ebeam writer to expose a pattern onto a photoresist layer on a quartz substrate. Then they develop the resist, etch away the quartz and then strip the resist. Ebeam writers have very high resolution and printing patterns of this size is not a problem.

A little math

[quintessent]

The observation that the computing power which can be incorporated in a given sized piece of silicon doubles roughly every 18 months was put forward by the head of Intel, Gordon Moore, in 1965. - BBC News.

We're probably 20 years ahead of the curve, - Professor Chou.

Seems a little exaggerated. Let's look at the numbers.

The article says they're 100x as dense (in area) as current technology.

if 2^7=128, then technology needs to double fewer than 7 times.

7 * 1.5 years = 10.5 years, far fewer than the claimed 20 years.

And this technology is still vaporware, so even 10.5 years is exaggerated.

Sounds cool, though. It would be nice if this really worked.