Aaron Hand

Who's Minding the Litho Store in Albany?
July 1, 2008

Molecular Imprints Inc. (Austin, Texas) put out a press release today announcing the appointment of Ben Eynon as the company’s vice president of marketing and business development for semiconductors. No wonder Sematech folks were being so cagey in May when I asked when Eynon would be taking over from Mike Lercel as lithography director. Eynon was supposed to be taking over in May, but Lercel was still holding the reins at the Litho Forum that month in Bolton Landing, N.Y. It turns out Lercel already knew then that Eynon was leaving, but couldn’t say anything before Molecular Imprints made its announcement. In fact, Eynon has already been at MII for about a month, he tells me.

The move was a natural one for Eynon who, as a Samsung assignee to Sematech, has been commuting to Albany each week from Austin to work with the lithography group up there at Albany NanoTech. Meanwhile, Molecular Imprints is based in Austin, and isn’t going anywhere but up. Not only is Eynon thrilling at the simple joys of coming home for dinner each night (he also commuted between Austin and San Jose for more than two years under KLA-Tencor’s employment), he says he is very happy to be working for such a well run company that is making significant progress with such chipmakers as Samsung and Toshiba.

Search is on

Eynon is certainly not the only fallout from Sematech’s move of its lithography activity from Austin to Albany — some are making similar commutes between locations, and still others have left Sematech altogether. But he is one of the more significant losses, causing the organization to scramble to find a new lithography director among its member companies. “We’ve already been working with our member companies to try to find top candidates. We started this discussion with them as soon as we found out,” Lercel said. “And we’ve been working with them as they go through and try and identify internal candidates for this position. And that obviously takes some time, because we’re looking for good people to fill those, and you have to shake somebody loose out of an existing organization, and that takes some time.”

How much time exactly Lercel declined to specify, except to say, “I sure hope it’s as soon as possible.” He has a vested interest in getting somebody in that position quickly because, in the meantime, he’s trying to hold down the fort while also having taken over a new position back at IBM, which originally assigned him to Sematech. At IBM, he’s tasked with managing the group that oversees the company’s semiconductor equipment strategy. As much as he may have enjoyed the lithography director position at Sematech, he’s needed back at the ranch. “I had already started my new job, so I’m kind of just doing the filling in as best that I can,” Lercel added.

Long time coming

Eynon has been eyeing a possible match with Molecular Imprints for about four years, actually, he said, but the timing never quite worked out before. Either he was ready and they weren’t, or they were ready and he wasn’t. And, although Sematech might certainly argue that the timing wasn’t exactly ideal, Eynon and MII CEO Mark Melliar-Smith thought now was the perfect opportunity.

It came shortly after Eynon found himself discussing the merits of nanoimprint lithography perhaps more than he had intended. At SPIE’s Advanced Lithography conference in February, for example, he ended up presenting a paper for his Korean colleagues who couldn’t attend because of travel costs — the topic being a successful evaluation Samsung had done of MII’s technology. At the same conference, Eynon participated in the Tuesday night panel discussion, “Future Projection Lithography: Optical or EUV?”, where he discussed litho candidates as political candidates, painting nanoimprint as the independent. Finally, at SEMI’s Strategic Business Conference in April, Eynon gave a talk that included EUV lithography and its issues, high-index immersion lithography and its issues, and nanoimprint lithography and its issues. “And then it was Q&A time, and everybody asked me about nanoimprint,” he said, making note of the article that quoted his “litho guru” views on nanoimprint. “And I still had no intentions of coming here.” But it was about two weeks after that when he got the call from Melliar-Smith, who said simply, “Now’s the time.”

And so now’s the time that Sematech must search for a new lithography director. Although he expects it to take some time, Lercel said, “we should be able to find some really good people to step in to continue to fill this director position.”

But wait, there’s more…

But meanwhile, another significant leader of the lithography activity in Albany has also left the building. Jim Ryan, who has been serving as vice president of technology at Albany NanoTech and professor of nanoscience at the University at Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) since 2005, has recently accepted a position as the founding dean of the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering (JSNN), a partnership between North Carolina A&T State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. When Ryan joined Albany NanoTech in 2005 after 25 years at IBM, he helped to negotiate the commitment from IBM to conduct much of its future research at Albany NanoTech. He will officially begin his new position July 14.

Eynon, however, isn’t too concerned about lithography’s future at Sematech. After all, John Warlaumont, who has overall responsibility for the consortium’s advanced technology R&D programs in Albany, comes from a strong lithography background at IBM. “So that should allay some fears that litho has no leader,” Eynon said.

Posted by Aaron Hand on July 1, 2008 | Comments (1)