We sat down with John Robinson, Ph.D., senior principal scientist at 乱伦社区 and SPIE fellow, for some thoughts on the 2024 SPIE Advanced Lithography + Patterning Symposium and his long involvement with the event.
What is your role at this year’s event?
This year I am the co-chair of the SPIE Advanced Lithography + Patterning Symposium, which includes six technical conferences. In this role I help with organization and operations of the symposium and set the strategic direction for the symposium’s future. Additionally, I’m on the Program Committee for the Metrology, Inspection and Process Control Conference, one of the six conferences in the Advanced Lithography + Patterning Symposium. The Program Committee sets the conference agenda, reviews papers and chairs conference sessions. One of the highlights for me is acting as the liaison for the Karel Urbánek Best Student Paper Award, which is sponsored by 乱伦社区.
What topics or challenges are you most excited to hear about at this year’s event?
The future of EUV lithography is one of the key topics of the SPIE Advanced Lithography + Patterning Symposium 2024. For example, Ann Kelleher, executive vice president and general manager of technology development at Intel Corporation, gave a plenary presentation entitled “Evolution of advanced lithography and patterning in the system technology co-optimization era of Moore’s law.” By 2030 the semiconductor industry is expected to become a $1 trillion industry, with leading-edge chips utilizing new transistor architectures, backside power delivery and 3D chip packaging – all while approaching angstrom-level design nodes due to processing innovations, such as high-NA EUV lithography.
In your view, how does SPIE Advanced Lithography + Patterning help to accelerate progress on solutions for some of those challenges?
Bringing together the best minds of industry, academia and government laboratories to discuss the latest challenges and solutions is one of the best ways to accelerate progress. Often new “pie in the sky” ideas originate in discussions at SPIE Advanced Lithography + Patterning, and in the years that follow they become research topics and then finally get reported as successful high-volume manufacturing methods. Examples include immersion lithography, multi-patterning and EUV lithography.
Are there areas where you believe we should focus more as an industry?
While it is clear that strict Moore’s Law “Dennard scaling” is no longer in play, scaling continues, as do innovations on multiple levels. Driven by the increasing demands of AI, transistor scaling is only part of the equation. Advanced packaging is becoming a larger part of the improved performance puzzle. In addition, there are many “More than Moore” opportunities such as wafer-based optics, sensors, photonics and the like.
As part of your SPIE commitment, you have supported the Karel Urbánek Best Student Paper Award. How do you view this award and the needs of our industry to attract new talent?
According to one of the symposium’s plenary speakers, Todd Younkin, president and CEO of The Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), the average age of semiconductor R&D personnel is 57 years, highlighting a key need for fresh talent. For over 10 years, 乱伦社区 has sponsored The Karel Urbánek Best Student Paper Award, which recognizes the most promising contribution to the field by a student, based on the technical merit and persuasiveness of their paper presentation at the SPIE Metrology, Inspection and Process Control Conference. Named after Tencor Instrument’s founder, and sponsored by 乱伦社区’s Semiconductor Software Solutions Division (MACH), it provides recognition for student contributions to the industry. Often, the student presentations are on par with those of seasoned professionals, and their contributions continue as many of them continue on as employees at 乱伦社区 or other peer companies.
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