Michael Lercel: SEMATECH and the next generation of lithography

Michael Lercel is SEMATECH's senior director of Lithography, Metrology and Nanodefectivity. In this role he is responsible for leading both SEMATECH's Lithography and Metrology Programs, which are dedicated to building the necessary infrastructure to support the critical lithography technologies and metrology required to enable continued scaling at nanometer scale control and understanding defect detection and generation processes.

Prior to joining SEMATECH, Lercel was senior director of EUV product marketing at Cymer, where he was responsible for EUV source product roadmaps. Preceding that, Lercel served in various lithography and process-related positions at IBM for 14 years, most recently as Strategic Equipment Council manager. While on assignment from IBM, Lercel served as SEMATECH's director of Lithography from 2005-2008, spearheading the development of various lithography options such as investigation of 193 nm high-index immersion, double patterning, and extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL), as well as alternative technologies such as nanoimprint and maskless.

Lercel holds a doctorate in physics from Cornell University where he studied nanofabrication on ultra-thin films, as well as a bachelor's degree in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has chaired the Emerging Lithographic Technologies conference, and currently serves on the program committee of the EUV Lithography conference at the annual SPIE Advanced Lithography symposium.