When working with Electron Beam Lithography (EBL), we normally talk about the electron beam after it has already been generated. We talk about beam current, aperture, focus, stigmatism, writing patterns and dose. But I had a more basic question: Where…
When I started working with EBL, I often heard something like: “Load the GDSII file and write the pattern.” It sounds very simple. We make the pattern in CAD, export the GDSII file, load it into the EBL software and…
When I first started learning about positioning in an EBL system, I thought alignment marks were mainly used to tell the machine where the wafer was. But then I had another question. If the wafer is already mounted on a…
While learning more about electron beam lithography, I had one practical question. Suppose someone gives me a GDSII file and asks me to write the pattern using EBL. The pattern is already designed. The dimensions are already there in the…
While learning Electron Beam Lithography, I kept seeing different beam-current values such as 25 pA, 1 nA and 12 nA. At first, I thought the choice should be simple. If a higher beam current means more electrons are reaching the…
By Gurwinder Singh Introduction When we talk about semiconductor chips, one sentence comes up again and again: “Modern chips contain billions of transistors.” I have heard this many times, and because of that, it is easy to start thinking that…
Published by Gurwinder Singh Introduction While learning Electron Beam Lithography, I came across two words again and again: Positive resist and negative resist. At first, I thought the names might have something to do with electrical charge. We are using…
Introduction In Part 1, we explored how researchers use Electron Beam Lithography (EBL) to transform scientific ideas into nanoscale devices. We looked at transistor development, quantum computing, and the research process that begins with a simple question and evolves through…
Introduction As a field service engineer, I spend a lot of time around Electron Beam Lithography systems. During customer visits, I meet researchers working on very different projects. One group may be building quantum devices, while another is studying graphene…