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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."
I've experimented with this technique a bit, and surprisingly it is very capable of replicating super tiny features. Surprising because the stamps are most commonly made from a flexible polymer material. They are very good at replicating tiny features from a master fabricated using electron beam lithography. One thing that we weren't able to solve was doing alignments between layers, since the stamps tend to be thick and hard to see through. But this is just an engineering issue that we didn't have the time or inclination to solve.
I was just blown away that we were able to fabricate high fidelity microstructures using what basically amount to a rubber stamp!
Maybe this means AMD will cut their prices on Athlon chips even more! With ram being so cheap, and this making it able to create more chips at less cost, maybe I really can have that beowulf cluster I've always wanted! Now what to do with it....
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
Intel is very willing to adopt new techniques. The other alternatives they have at this feature size are e-beam (very slow serial writing process) or deep UV lithography (they've ordered a tool with a price tag of ~$1 billion )
Altogether, it looks like a nice process, but it's not immediately clear that it will help.
I've just heard a talk on a very similar technique that does not require heating and melting the substrate. This process squishes a liquid polymer between the template and the substrate so that the polymer fills the gaps in the template. Then they cure the polymer with UV light, lift off the template and then more or less follow the standard etching process.
The first thing you would wonder about is problems with air gaps and bubbles but they say that this has not been a problem.
They also say that template lifetime does not appear to be an issue but they need to do a longer term study on this.
One of the bigger problems they were facing was pattern alignment because the liquid polymer acts as a lubricant and the template tends to slide around as its being pressed down. They say they have addressed this problem with more rigid and precise mechanics.
Its very interesting technology and its expected that this technology will begin showing up in corporate research fabs - rather than academic research - by next year.
Been to? Hell, I used to work at one. Lovely fab safety classes -- "If you ignore the gas leak alarm, please try to die within 6 feet of the door. That's how long the pole hook is to drag your body out."
Not to mention the horror stories about HF (watch your bones melt!), phosphine and other gasses which can kill you before you smell them (but the MSDS lists them as smelling like lemon... go figure), liquid scrubbers like Pirhana that meant no contacts (if the system backblasts the Pirhana would melt the contacts to your eyes), etc.
That said, this process will only eliminate Photolithography... which is the process that uses the fewest of these amazingly nasty chemicals from what I recall. But I worked mostly with PVD/CVD and etchers, so I could be wrong about Photo's chemical usage.
True. Current transistor operation is statistical, so we need certain amount of electrons flowing from source to drain. If we make the gate thinner and thinner the rush will be like in tokyo subwaystation. This generates more collisions and heat no matter what you do. Still I think this business is just started.
hopey