RAITH Group’s Post

Get a closer look at the future of EUV mask defect review. EUV Tech’s Dr. Luke Long will present at the upcoming SPIE Photomask Technology + EUV Lithography 2025 conference. The event takes place September 22–25, 2025, at the Monterey Marriott, in Monterey, California. On Monday, September 22, from 6:00 to 7:30 PM PDT, Luke will present: “Computational imaging using a lab-based EUV zoneplate microscope” This presentation showcases imaging advancements enabled by the high-volume manufacturing version of the AIRES system—a zoneplate-based EUV mask defect review tool developed by EUV Tech. The work demonstrates how partially coherent illumination and synthetic reconstruction techniques can emulate scanner conditions, enable aerial image formation, and identify phase defects—all without added computational cost. 🔗 Learn more about the session: https://lnkd.in/gtrwd-iw #EUVTech #SPIE2025 #EUV #AIRES #ZoneplateMicroscope #ComputationalImaging #Photomask #ActinicMetrology #Semiconductors #ConferenceSpeaker #LukeLong

Optical metasurfaces with below optical wavelength dimensions provide a versatile platform for the control of light within a compact form factor. Major advances in their capabilities have allowed for new applications such as structured light 3D scanning, computer vision, near-eye displays, and beam steering. While some forms of optical aberrations of these systems have been extensively studied, such as spherical, astigmatism, coma, and chromatic aberrations, distortion and its compensation remain underexplored. Recently a metalens design was presented utilizing the extra degrees of freedom of a doublet metasurface architecture to allow custom tailored angle-dependent image height relations and distortion control while minimizing other monochromatic aberrations. With this approach, a compound fisheye metalens device was demonstrated with diffraction-limited performance across a wide field of view of 140° and a low barrel distortion of less than 2%, compared with up to 22% distortion in a reference singlet metalens without compensation. The novel work was reported by Zheng Hanyu, Fan Yang, Hung-I Lin, Mikhail Shalaginov, ZHAOYI LI, Padraic B., Tian Gu, and JJ Hu in a collaborative effort from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT Materials Research Laboratory, and 2Pi Inc. The work was performed in part using an STS-Elionix BODEN 150 kV electron beam lithography system at the Center for Nanoscale Systems at Harvard University. For more information see https://lnkd.in/e7Afcdwe Image: The fabricated compound metalens where MS1 and MS2 are two metalens surfaces that are stacked on top of each other. (a, b) On the left side are optical images of the partial area in the two metasurfaces. Black scale bars: 200 μm. On the right side, the insets show top- and tilted-view scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of the meta-atoms. White scale bars: 3 μm. (c) Photo of the assembled compound metalens. (Image use is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.)

At the 2025 SPIE Photomask Technology + EUV Lithography Conference, imec presents major milestones in advancing the single print capabilities of High-NA EUV patterning in support of the sub-2nm logic technology roadmap. Highlights include demonstrations of advanced line-space patterning and direct metal etch of ruthenium, achieving yields and uniformities relevant for future interconnect scaling. These results, enabled in part by the EU’s NanoIC pilot line, mark a step-change — showing imec’s leadership in lithography R&D and pioneering the path from lab to fab. With the pedestal for the EXE:5200 High NA EUV scanner already installed in our cleanroom, and the scanner on its way, imec, together with ASML and 50+ ecosystem partners, is preparing to make High NA EUV a manufacturing reality. ➡️ Read the full press release: https://lnkd.in/ewtyff85 ➡️ Details are presented in Paper 13686-4 – “Advances of dry resist towards next-generation lines-spaces patterning in high NA EUV lithography.”

Exciting news 🌟 Our coordinator team has just published cutting-edge HoLiSTEP research! 🚀 New research in Micro and Nano Engineering explores how to push the boundaries of 3D microfabrication using i-line grayscale projection lithography. This breakthrough is what makes our holographic stepper truly disruptive! The team (Fraunhofer ENAS, Technische Universität Chemnitz, Benchmark Technologies and MRT GmbH) optimized a reticle-based, high-throughput approach to create smooth 3D structures in photoresist—crucial for MEMS, optics, and microsystems. 🔬 Key insights: Surface roughness matters: rough resist surfaces transfer directly into underlying layers during etching. Annealing is the sweet spot: heating between 90–100 °C dramatically reduces surface roughness (up to 87%) while preserving structure fidelity. Pixel size trade-offs: smaller pixels reduce recurring roughness patterns, but balancing resolution and gray levels is key. ⚙️ The outcome: a practical process window for fabricating smoother, high-fidelity 3D microstructures—opening new possibilities for lenses, microfluidics, and next-gen MEMS. 📖 Full paper (open access): https://lnkd.in/esVSwAui

Press release – At the 2025 SPIE Photomask Technology + EUV Lithography Conference, imec presents major milestones in advancing the single print capabilities of High-NA EUV patterning in support of the sub-2nm logic technology roadmap.   Highlights include demonstrations of advanced line-space patterning and direct metal etch of ruthenium, achieving yields and uniformities relevant for future interconnect scaling.   These results, enabled in part by the EU’s NanoIC pilot line, mark a step-change — showing imec’s leadership in lithography R&D and pioneering the path from lab to fab.   With the pedestal for the EXE:5200 High NA EUV scanner already installed in our cleanroom, and the scanner on its way, imec, together with ASML and 50+ ecosystem partners, is preparing to make High NA EUV a manufacturing reality.   👉 Read the full press release: https://lnkd.in/ewtyff85 👉 Details are presented in Paper 13686-4 – “Advances of dry resist towards next-generation lines-spaces patterning in high NA EUV lithography.”

Fantastic progress made by Lam Research through joint collaborations with imec and ASML in advanced patterning. Dry resists is validated through high NA electrical test vehicles at imec The aggressive T2T achieved shows how materials and processes can enable new technology. Congrats to the Lam team that spearheaded this work: Shruti Jambaldinni Elisabeth Camerotto Zhengtao Chen #LifeatLam More on the advances in 3D engineered dry resists will be presented by Ali Haider and Ching-Chung Huang at. SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics EUVL conference today. Advances of dry resist towards next-generation lines-spaces patterning in high-NA EUV lithography by Ali Haider, 22 September 2025 • 1:30 PM - 1:50 PM PDT Holistic dry resist optimization on bright field EUV contact hole patterning by Ching-Chung Huang, 22 September 2025 • 2:30 PM - 2:45 PM PDT

A proud moment that our work is press released today. We are pushing the limits to enable metal logic patterning down to sub-20 nm pitch in a single high-NA EUV exposure. The printability of pitch 20 nm T2T structure with T2T CD 13 nm having LCDU < 3 nm became the pinnacle of single EUV exposure. More development are ongoing to even push the T2T CD to 11 nm with the required interconnects spec and the etch transfer to hard mask. Along with that we showed the capability of direct metal etch (DME) of pitch 20 nm ruthenium (Ru) metal lines with single exposure High NA EUV lithography with the e-test yield having 100%. These results enabled not only mark a major milestone in advancing the single print capabilities of High NA EUV patterning, they also enable the broader ecosystem that drives the High NA EUV transition to high volume manufacturing, unlocking the sub-2nm logic technology roadmap. Congratulation to all from imec, Lam Research, ASML to make it possible https://lnkd.in/eG9Sq6Ky

"Two photon lithography applications" is a series of videos I'm creating with Notebook LM about nice papers recently published using Two photon lithography. Episode 1 is about "3D-Printed Micro Ion Trap Technology for Scalable Quantum Information Processing", which were fabricated on a Nanoscribe two-photon lithography system. Huge congrats to the authors: Shuqi Xu , Xiaoxing Xia, Sumanta Khan, Eli Megidish, Bingran You, Andrew Jayich, Juergen Biener, and others. 🚀 #QuantumComputing #IonTraps #3DPrinting #TwoPhotonPolymerization

#HBA lithography tool ‘outstrips electron beam capabilities’ 🔊✴️ A hyper-beam array lithography system has been introduced to the US, based on architecture pioneered in Europe. The #lithography tool operates with 65,000 independently controlled parallel beams which delivers capabilities at a scale no electron beam technology can match, said SecureFoundry Inc Installed at Northrup Grumann, it addresses the holy grail of chip design, said founder and CEO, Lex Keen. Read the full story 👉 https://ow.ly/F4Vj50XaF18

In our new paper, we show that smooth MOF film coatings can act as hosts for fluorescent biosensor arrays printed by scanning probe lithography approaches. By multiplexing the dyes in such arrays they can distinguish small biomolecules via PCA. You can read the full story (open access) now in Small: "Multiplexed Fluorescent Microarrays on MIL-101(Cr) Thin Films as Luminescent Probes for pH and Disease-Associated Molecules" https://lnkd.in/e9KGirdZ Thanks and a hout out to the team: Wenjing Wang, Wenwu Yang, Maike Schliephake, Tonghan Zhao, Yan Liu, Navid Hussain, Ben Breitung, Andreas Schäfer, Pavel Levkin, Jasmin Aghassi-Hagmann, and Annie Powell #SPL #Biosensors #MOF #KNMFi