Silicon-Based Nanofabrication and Transitions to Technology

ABSTRACT:
Motivated by the seminal work by Eigler and coworkers at moving individual atoms on metal surfaces in a cryogenic UHV STM1, it became intriguing to wonder if something similar could be done on silicon at room temperature. This led to the development of hydrogen resist lithography (HRL) where a hydrogen monolayer serves as an electron beam resist for STM electrons2. This talk will describe the original development of HRL and its extension to selective chemistry on silicon. Nanometallization and STM probe development will also be discussed. Paralleling the nanofabrication track was a study of the underlying mechanisms of HRL. This led to the discovery of the giant deuterium isotope effect which was subsequently found to dramatically harden CMOS transistor technology against hot-carrier degradation effects3. Deuterium is now used in commercial chip production for this purpose. This talk will also discuss the integration of nonvolatile nanostructures with atomically clean surfaces through a simple UHV stamping process.

1. D. Eigler and E. Schweizer. Nature 1990, 344, (6266), 524-526.
2. J. W. Lyding et al. Applied Physics Letters 1994, 64, (15), 2010-2012.
3. J. W. Lyding et al. Applied Physics Letters 1996, 68, (18), 2526-2528.

BIOGRAPHY:
Joseph W. Lyding is the Robert C. MacClinchie Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University in 1983. He joined the Illinois faculty to work with Nobel laureate John Bardeen on the 1D charge-density wave problem. During that time, he developed the first scanning tunneling microscope in the Midwestern United States, which he used to create the atomic resolution hydrogen resist process for patterning silicon surfaces. In these experiments, he also discovered the giant deuterium isotope effect that is now being used in large-scale chip production to reduce hot-carrier degradation in CMOS technology. More recently, he developed a method to improve the performance of carbon nanotube transistors, developed a method to deposit nanostructures onto atomically clean surfaces, and he invented a technology for producing ultra-sharp hard-coated electrically conductive probes. This latter technology has been commercialized to produce the probes for semiconductor wafer probing and scanned probe microscopy. Lyding was selected as a UIUC University Scholar, and he is a Fellow of the APS, IEEE, AVS and AAAS. He received the 2012 IEEE Pioneer in Nanotechnology Award, the 2013 AVS Nanotechnology Recognition Award, the 2013 Research Excellence Award from the Nano/Bio Interface Center at the University of Pennsylvania, the 2014 AVS Prairie Chapter Award for Outstanding Research, and the 2014 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology.