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Prof. Cliff Henderson, Georgia Tech
Dreaming Little Dreams: Enabling Electronic Nanotechnology using Polymers and Organic Materials
For more information contact Prof. Laren Tolbert (404-894-4093).
The ability to form high resolution two dimensional and three dimensional structures in various organic and inorganic materials is a critical and enabling technology in a wide variety of modern applications ranging from the now seemingly mundane to the cutting edge. For example, all of the modern electronic devices (e.g. computers, cell phones, iPods, digital cameras, etc.) that we take for granted daily rely on the use of microprocessors and memory devices that possess device features smaller than 100 nm in size (for comparison, a human hair is approximately 50 microns (50,000 nm) in diameter). The critical and enabling technology for mass producing such microelectronic devices is the combination of lithographic materials, processes, and tools used to pattern the nanoscale device elements that constitute the transistor device active layers and the subsequent electrical interconnect layers that make up such devices. However, moving forward there are a number of challenges in terms of the materials, tools, and economics of such micro- and nanofabrication technologies that threaten the continued advancement of microelectronics. Solutions to these problems will require new materials and new material processing approaches.
The first part of this presentation will review the current state of the art in lithographic patterning technologies and the current challenges being faced including pattern collapse, optical diffraction limits, and diffusion-induced photoresist image blur. The focus of the talk will then shift to discuss how chemistry, chemical engineering, and materials science can have a positive impact on overcoming these challenges. This background in lithography will first be used to motivate our work in characterizing the mechanical behavior of polymeric nanostructures and the invention of novel reactive rinse schemes which have been now shown to help mitigate problems associated with resist feature pattern collapse. This same issue of pattern collapse will then be used to motivate and review our work related to developing negative tone molecular resists that function via cross-linking to produce sub-20nm patterning capabilities. Finally, a brief overview of our more recent work in designing, synthesizing, and processing block copolymers using directed self-assembly (DSA) techniques to achieve pitch sub-division and creation of sub-20nm patterns over large areas will be presented. It will be shown how a combination of detailed mesoscale molecular dynamics (MD) modeling and synthetic work has advanced our understanding of such DSA processes which hold promise for extension of current optical lithographic technologies into the deep sub-20nm pattern pitch regime.
Biography:
Professor Clifford L. Henderson is a Professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Georgia Tech, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. After working with Motorola in their Advanced Products Research and Development Laboratory (APRDL) for a brief period, he returned to join the faculty at Georgia Tech in 1998. He has authored or coauthored more than 180 papers and holds more than 10 patents in areas related to polymeric materials, lithography, and materials and methods for micro- and nanofabrication. He has received a number of awards for his work including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the 2012 Semiconductor Technology Committee Outstanding Researcher Award in Lithography. Professor Henderson was also elected to be a SPIE Fellow in 2010 for his extensive work in lithography and lithographic materials.
