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Program Speakers  Preliminary Program<< Back |
Michael WalshLumArray, Inc. USA MASKLESS PHOTOLITHOGRAPHY: CHANGING THE GAME IN MICRO AND NANO MANUFACTURING Micro and nanotechnologies have had, and in the future will continue to have, their most transformative impact when they provide structures of high functionality, not just passive properties. High functionality, such as in electronics, photonics, microfluidics and MEMS, depends directly on high levels of structural complexity. With few exceptions, the planar-fabrication process, i.e., lithography followed by pattern transfer, is what puts high levels of structural complexity into materials. It is commonly assumed that the stunning success of semiconductor-industry manufacturing provides the template for future nanomanufacturing of highly functional structures, regardless of the sphere of application. This talk will argue that such an assumption is fundamentally flawed, and that a maskless photolithography technology, spun off from research at MIT, is more appropriate for research and development as well as customized manufacturing, over a broad range of applications, from electronics and photonics to tissue scaffolds and stemcell applications. LumArray's innovation replaces the large, expensive, refractive-optical projection lens of traditional photolithography with a array of diffractive-optical microlenses, operating in parallel to achieve high throughput. This innovation is enabled by recent advances in nanofabrication, computation, spatial-light modulators, photochromic chemistry and electromagnetic-simulation tools, available only in recent years. |