A brief perspective is given initially on the goals, exposure methods, performance and challenges in the lithography process. The basic framework for simulating optical lithography is then presented using three important physical aspects: imaging, resist exposurebleaching and resist development etching. Image quality in both contact/proximity and projection printing are considered. The verifica...

As minimum feature sizes shrink, unexpected hotspots appear on wafers. Therefore, it is critical to detect and fix these hotspots at design stage to reduce development time and manufacturing cost. Currently, the most accurate approach to detect such hotspots is lithography simulation. However, it is known to be time-consuming. This paper proposes a new hotspot detection method with both a regre...

We have developed a multilevel interference lithography process to fabricate 50 nm period gratings using light with a 351.1 nm wavelength. In this process multiple grating levels patterned by interference lithography are overlaid and spatial-phase aligned to a common reference grating using interferometry. Each grating level is patterned with offset phase shifts and etched into a single layer t...

Interference lithography (IL) is the preferred method for fabricating periodic and quasi-periodic patterns that must be spatially coherent over large areas. IL is a conceptually simple process where two coherent beams interfere to produce a standing wave, which can be recorded in a photoresist. The spatial-period of the grating can be as fine as half the wavelength of the interfering light, all...

Moore’s Law has been the most important benchmark for microelectronics development over the past four decades. It has been interpreted to mean that critical dimensions (CD) of a design must shrink geometrically over time. The chip-level integration of devices has been possible through concurrent improvement in lithographic resolution. The lithographic resolution was primarily improved by moving...

Line edge roughness is an important factor contributing to the problem of performance degradation in various nanoscale devices. We have developed two smoothing techniques based on nanoimprint lithography for the fabrication of nanoscale gratings with significantly reduced line edge roughness. Compared with other smoothing techniques reported before, our methods are low-cost, effective, and easy...

The bipolar main tetraether lipid (MPL) o f Thermoplasma acidophilum has been shown to form typical liquid expanded films at the air-water interface. The limiting molecular area at the collaps pressure is approximately Ac = 7 3 A 2 per molecule. Monopolar diphytanyl diether lipids were found to occupy the same area at high surface pressure as MPL. Thus, it was concluded that in the monofilm onl...

In this paper, we formulate the problem of early classification of time series data, which is important in some time-sensitive applications such as healthinformatics. We introduce a novel concept of MPL (Minimum Prediction Length) and develop ECTS (Early Classification on Time Series), an effective 1-nearest neighbor classification method. ECTS makes early predictions and at the same time retai...