NQCP - Life in Quantum - w. speaker Bodil Holst, CEO and Co-founder Lace Lithography

Speaker: Bodil Holst, CEO and Co-founder Lace Lithography A/S

Title: "We have shaped the atom": Mask-based lithography with metastable helium atoms

Abstract: Today mask-based photolithography is used to print all microchips. However there is a fundamental challenge in using photons for printing. If you want to increase the resolution you need to reduce the wavelength and this inevitably increases the wavelength of the photon. This incrase in energy with wavelength ultimately leads to electron blurring in the resist, which limits the minimum achievable feature size.  Today the highest resolution pattern used in leading edge node chips are printed using extreeme ultraviolet lithography (EUV). EUV photons have a wavelength of around 13 nm and an energy of around 90 eV.  In Lace Lithography we are deveoping metastable helium (He*) atom matter wave lithography as the next-generation, beyond EUV, lithograpy tool.  A fundamental advantage of using metstable atom waves for lithography is that the patterning resolution is decoupled from the patterning energy. The wavelength of a helium atom is typically less than 0.1 nm, smaller than any desired resolution, while the deposited energy (the patterning energy) is no more than 20 eV and independent of the wavelength. I present first  experimental results from our He* atom lithography prototype tool,  demonstrating how AI-based Inverse Lithography Technology (ILT) diffraction mask designs for atoms can be used to  "shape the atom" and produce arbitrary patterns with a theoretical resolution limit down to the atomic spacing of silicon.

CV: Bodil Holst is CEO and co-founder of Lace Lithography. She is a world-leading expert with over 20 years of experience developing advanced helium instrumentation. She holds a PhD in experimental surface physics from the University of Cambridge and a master of physics and mathematics from the University of Copenhagen. She spent several years at the Max Planck institute in Göttingen. Before founding Lace, she was Professor of Physics at the University of Bergen and served as Chair of the Kavli Prize Committee in Nanoscience (2019–2024). Scientific work includes fundamental investigations of the properties of 2D materials as well as work on anti-icing, including a recent study of the anti-icing properties of polar bear fur.