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IMEC’s Ronse Worth a Listen
November 27, 2007
Besides covering lithography for Semiconductor International, as executive editor of electronic media, I’m also in charge of our website, webcasts, newsletters, podcasts, etc. So, when Dave Lammers, SI’s news editor, conducted an interview recently with Kurt Ronse, director of lithography at IMEC (Leuven, Belgium), he tossed me his audio file to see what I might want to do with it.
As you might already know, SI’s editors are in the habit of conducting audio interviews with various industry leaders, particularly while out at tradeshows and conferences. The idea is to bring you highlights of the conversations we’re having out in the industry, letting you listen in on the various insights from the trenches. Because we know your time is precious, our goal is typically to conduct 5- to 10-minute “highlight” interviews.
What Dave sent me just before Thanksgiving, though, was an almost 40-minute interview he had had with Ronse, as a follow-up from the EUVL Symposium held last month in Sapporo, Japan. I managed to edit the conversation down to ~26 minutes, but I thought there was just too much interesting insight to whittle it down to our usual 10-minute piece.
Please forgive me for being so bold, but I think it’s worth 26 minutes of your day. In this interview, Ronse details his thoughts on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography — improved EUV source power and machine throughput, debris mitigation, resists, competition from other technologies, and EUV’s ultimate readiness for 32 nm (not) and beyond (they’re working on it). Keep in mind: IMEC has one of only two alpha demo tools from ASML in operation (the other one being at Albany NanoTech), so Ronse has some very valuable insight into how these tools may or may not work in volume production.
So there’s my shameless plug for the day. For the key highlights, Lammers has written up a good news item on IMEC’s EUV plans. But for more from Ronse, click on the “Listen to the interview” link within the article, too.
Posted by Aaron Hand on November 27, 2007 | Comments (0)
