News & Analysis
Comment
lgadwah
http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research_projects.nsf/pages/selfassembly.nxta ...
iniewski
Can direct sub-assembly find application in other areas of manufacturing beyond ...
Momentum builds for directed self-assembly
Dylan McGrath
3/2/2011 4:24 PM EST
Possible niche role
In the event that EUV cannot be made commercially viable, there are several other possibilities for future chip scaling, including DSA. But some say DSA and other technologies may have a future role even if EUV is put into volume production for high-end, mainstream logic chips.
"If self assembly comes to commercialization, there are some things it can do very well," said Eric Johnson, president of JSR Micro Inc., a unit of Japan's JSR Corp. Johnson suggested that DSA—which is potentially much less expensive than EUV production—could have applications in, for example, flash memory production, where the regular structure of circuits and cost sensitivity of the market may make it attractive.
JSR this week rolled out a DSA technology for the sub-20-nm half-pitch node that is being developed as part of an ongoing research agreement with IBM Corp. While most publicly known research into DSA utilizes block copolymer, JSA's technology uses a blend of polymers, giving it more stability and the capability to undergo wet etch processing, according to Hishiro.
DSA was a hit at last year's SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference, with more than 10 papers presented on the topic. This year there were significantly more, with some including Applied's Bencher suggesting the technology is moving from the lab to a more serious phase of commercial development.
"I'm really happy with the results we've gotten recently," said JSR's Johnson. "The recent progress is very encouraging."
In addition to Bencher's presentation, others at SPIE, including Joy Cheng of IBM, Hayato Namai of JSR Micro and Charlie Liu of the University of Wisconsin, detailed DSA research progress. Cheng highlighted improvements in process window and critical dimension uniformity in a project between IBM and the University of California-Santa Barbara.
Earlier in the day, Thomas Russell a processor at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst detailed extensive work on the challenges of using DSA to create measurably perfect structures. Russell highlighted several outstanding challenges and said there may be a fundamental limit on how small structures made with DSA can be built.
Russell also said that it may become more difficult to achieve etch contrast as the research moves to smaller structures and thinner films.
"I think that's going o be a synthetic challenge to utilizing some of the structures that I know we can provide," he said.
In the event that EUV cannot be made commercially viable, there are several other possibilities for future chip scaling, including DSA. But some say DSA and other technologies may have a future role even if EUV is put into volume production for high-end, mainstream logic chips.
"If self assembly comes to commercialization, there are some things it can do very well," said Eric Johnson, president of JSR Micro Inc., a unit of Japan's JSR Corp. Johnson suggested that DSA—which is potentially much less expensive than EUV production—could have applications in, for example, flash memory production, where the regular structure of circuits and cost sensitivity of the market may make it attractive.
JSR this week rolled out a DSA technology for the sub-20-nm half-pitch node that is being developed as part of an ongoing research agreement with IBM Corp. While most publicly known research into DSA utilizes block copolymer, JSA's technology uses a blend of polymers, giving it more stability and the capability to undergo wet etch processing, according to Hishiro.
DSA was a hit at last year's SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference, with more than 10 papers presented on the topic. This year there were significantly more, with some including Applied's Bencher suggesting the technology is moving from the lab to a more serious phase of commercial development.
"I'm really happy with the results we've gotten recently," said JSR's Johnson. "The recent progress is very encouraging."
In addition to Bencher's presentation, others at SPIE, including Joy Cheng of IBM, Hayato Namai of JSR Micro and Charlie Liu of the University of Wisconsin, detailed DSA research progress. Cheng highlighted improvements in process window and critical dimension uniformity in a project between IBM and the University of California-Santa Barbara.
Earlier in the day, Thomas Russell a processor at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst detailed extensive work on the challenges of using DSA to create measurably perfect structures. Russell highlighted several outstanding challenges and said there may be a fundamental limit on how small structures made with DSA can be built.
Russell also said that it may become more difficult to achieve etch contrast as the research moves to smaller structures and thinner films.
"I think that's going o be a synthetic challenge to utilizing some of the structures that I know we can provide," he said.
|
|
|
|
|
Navigate to related information
Les_Slater
3/2/2011 8:03 PM EST
The article talks about the potential of this technology and at what development stage it may be at but doesn’t explain what it is. It was the title of the article that brought me to read it. The implications are quite attractive.
My first introduction to such concepts was at an MIT talk I attended in the late 80’s by K. Eric Wexler. What this present article is referring to does not seem to be related to his ‘universal assemblers’ though. That was a relief because the mechanism he suggested, engineering proteins for specific mechanical assembly tasks seems quite remote still.
So, on this new ‘directed self-assembly’, the question arises, what is the mechanism of the direction?
Looking around the web a bit I see there is talk of lithographic patterning and random deposition where capillary, electrostatic and van der Waals forces focus or sharpen the random deposition to conform to the lithographic pattern. Is this what we’re talking about here? Sounds exciting.
Sign in to Reply
Les_Slater
3/2/2011 8:05 PM EST
The article talks about the potential of this technology and at what development stage it may be at but doesn’t explain what it is. It was the title of the article that brought me to read it. The implications are quite attractive.
My first introduction to such concepts was at an MIT talk I attended in the late 80’s by K. Eric Wexler. What this present article is referring to does not seem to be related to his ‘universal assemblers’ though. That was a relief because the mechanism he suggested, engineering proteins for specific mechanical assembly tasks seems quite remote still.
So, on this new ‘directed self-assembly’, the question arises, what is the mechanism of the direction?
Looking around the web a bit I see there is talk of lithographic patterning and random deposition where capillary, electrostatic and van der Waals forces focus or sharpen the random deposition to conform to the lithographic pattern. Is this what we’re talking about here? Sounds exciting.
Sign in to Reply
dylan.mcgrath
3/3/2011 1:01 PM EST
@les_slater- paragraph 6 of the above article is my best attempt at explaining what I understand DSA to be in the simplest possible terms. I realize it probably falls short. I solicited this quote from Christopher Bencher of Applied Materials to describe what DSA is. I hope it helps:
"Self assembly is a method of patterning using polymer phase-separation to generate features, typically less than 20nm, instead of relying solely on the classic mask projection into photo-resist. It has now established the first 300mm wafer defect density data point for directed self-assembly, and when plotted on historical defect density reduction roadmaps appears to be quite promising; the initial value is comparable to the immersion defect densities in its early years of commercialization. This result merits continued research and development for establishing directed self-assembly as a viable patterning technique for semiconductor manufacturing." -- Christopher Bencher, Applied Materials
Sign in to Reply
Les_Slater
3/2/2011 8:17 PM EST
K. Eric Wexler is of course, K. Eric Drexler.
Sign in to Reply
double-o-nothing
3/3/2011 10:08 AM EST
The number of self-assembled lines is too sensitive to the boundary size. A line could disappear if the boundary is a tad narrow.
Sign in to Reply
selinz
3/3/2011 11:31 PM EST
This sounds similar to the Langmuir blodgett films that IBM was working on in 1983... Cool stuff but it's been around quite a while.. Nice application though.
Sign in to Reply
iniewski
3/4/2011 11:23 AM EST
Can direct sub-assembly find application in other areas of manufacturing beyond lithography? Kris
Sign in to Reply
lgadwah
3/4/2011 2:39 PM EST
http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research_projects.nsf/pages/selfassembly.nxtalFLASH.html
Sign in to Reply