The Annual Photomask Symposium continues to be the premier worldwide technical conference for the photomask industry. This year's symposium will give the authors an opportunity to present their exciting research findings that relate to the emerging technical challenges facing the photomask industry, to an international audience of their peers.
At the 2009 Photomask symposium, we heard that EUV lithography introduction, regardless of all of the problems, is inevitable. How much closer has this prediction, from last years keynote speaker, come to fruition? During the conference and the panel discussion we heard about all the obstacles prohibiting the introduction of EUV mask manufacturing; will these problems be remedied by September 2010? Will the industry be any closer to solving the infrastructure problem and addressing the defect problems?
One thing is certain, in order continue to follow Moore's law, we need EUV or a continued advancement in multi-patterning (double, triple or quadruple patterning?) Or will source mask optimization save the industry?
As always, the industry's progress will depend on the successful integration and optimization of design, maskmaking, and chip fabrication. The 2009 symposium introduced pattern media to the fold, hosting a breakout session which was widely popular. The BACUS steering committee has decided to have a repeat performance from this interesting technology. There were several papers describing the metrology, replication and mastering challenges of patterned media presented. It will be interesting to learn more about this developing technology at Photomask 2010.
We urge you to submitt your work, encourage your colleagues to submit, and most of all ask your company to continue to sponsor Photomask.
We welcome your participation!
M. Warren Montgomery
College of NanoScale Science and Engineering (CNSE) and
SEMATECH Inc.
Symposium Chair 2010
Wilhelm Maurer
Infineon Technologies AG (Germany)
Symposium Co-Chair 2010
Steering Committee
Frank E. Abboud, Intel Corp.
Paul W. Ackmann, GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc.
Michael D. Archuletta, RAVE LLC
Artur P. Balasinski, Cypress Semiconductor Corp.
Uwe F. W. Behringer, UBC Microelectronics (Germany)
Peter D. Buck, Toppan Photomasks, Inc.
Brian Cha, SEMATECH North
Thomas B. Fauer, IBM Corp.
Brian J. Grenon, Grenon Consulting, Inc.
Naoya Hayashi, Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. (Japan)
Mark T. Jee, HOYA Corp. USA
Emmanuel Rausa, Plasma-Therm LLC
Douglas J. Resnick, Molecular Imprints, Inc.
Steffen F. Schulze, Mentor Graphics Corp.
Wolf Staud, Applied Materials, Inc.
J. Tracy Weed, Synopsys, Inc.
John M. Whittey, KLA-Tencor Corp.
Banqiu Wu, Applied Materials, Inc.
Larry S. Zurbrick, Agilent Technologies, Inc.
