Who's Minding the Litho Store in Albany?

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.