Bid for new Electron-Beam Lithography Tool

在过去的50年里，在以纳米（几个原子）的精度组装材料的能力方面取得了惊人的进步。这种纳米制造能力是建立在光刻和图案转移的双重支柱上的。整个范围的工具用于模式转移。光刻是一种用于生产小结构的照相工艺，其中结构被“绘制”在薄的辐射敏感薄膜上。然后是图案转移步骤，其中形状被转移到有用的材料中，例如有源半导体器件或金属线的材料。光刻技术是制造硅集成电路的关键工艺，比如拥有80亿个工作晶体管的微处理器，或者直径超过2英寸的相机芯片。微处理器的制造是在专门的大型工厂中完成的，这些工厂仅限于制造一种设备。此外，普通的光刻工具需要生产大型、完美和极其昂贵的“底片”，因此使用这种技术制造大量相同的设备是经济的。然而，光刻技术的应用远不止于制造硅芯片。例如，大面积的小点材料可用于使细胞向特定方向生长或成为用于再生医学的特定细胞类型；激光上精确的衍射光栅的定义使它能够产生完美控制的光波长，这些波长用于制造便携式原子钟或测量与大脑功能有关的微小磁场；光刻技术可以直接操纵量子态，以完善时间和电流的国际标准，并可能在某一天彻底改变计算；通过控制材料的大小和形状，我们可以赋予它新的特性，使其能够替代稀缺的战略材料，如碲，用于收集废热能。这笔拨款将用于在先进的通用制造实验室安装“电子束光刻”系统。电子束光刻使用电子束而不是光来暴露抗蚀剂，并且具有与电子显微镜相比光学显微镜相同的分辨率优势。该系统将允许在大样品上生产最小的结构，但不需要昂贵的“负片”来制造。相反，就像激光打印机一样，要写的图案是在软件中定义的，因此，如果只制造一个特定形状的物体，就不会有改变形状的成本。因此，电子束光刻系统非常适合为科学研究制作小物件或为小公司制作少量专用设备。该工具将被安置在一个实验室中，该实验室允许处理尽可能广泛的材料，从几毫米宽的珍贵宝石钻石到餐盘大小的奇异半导体盘。该工具将被来自英国和世界各地的约200人使用。通过连续运行，该工具的使用将非常便宜，允许从学生到小型企业的任何人都可以使用先进的光刻技术。该工具将由一个由经验丰富的员工组成的大型专业团队提供支持和操作，因此，应用这个时代最强大技术的最先进化身的学习曲线将缩短到几周的时间。

The last fifty years have seen spectacular progress in the ability to assemble materials with a precision of nanometers (a few atoms across). This nanofabrication ability is built upon the twin pillars of lithography and pattern transfer. A whole range of tools are used for pattern transfer. Lithography is a photographic process for the production of small structures in which structures are "drawn" in a thin radiation sensitive film. Then comes the pattern transfer step in which the shapes are transferred into a useful material, such as that of an active semiconductor device or a metal wire. Lithography is the key process used to make silicon integrated circuits, such as a microprocessor with eight billion working transistors, or a camera chip which is over two inches across.The manufacture of microprocessors is accomplished in large, dedicated factories which are limited to making one type of device. Also, normal lithography tools require the production of large, perfect and extremely expensive "negatives" so that it is only economical to use this technology to make huge numbers of identical devices.The applications of lithography are far broader than just making silicon chips, however. For example, large areas of small dots of material can be used to make cells grow in particular directions or to become certain cell types for use in regenerative medicine; The definition of an exquisitely precise diffraction grating on a laser allows it to produce the perfectly controlled wavelengths of light needed to make portable atomic clocks or to measure the tiny magnetic fields associated with the functioning of the brain; Lithography enables the direct manipulation of quantum states needed to refine the international standards of time and electrical current and may one day revolutionise computation; By controlling the size and shape of a material we can give it new properties, enabling the replacement of scarce strategic materials such as tellurium in the harvesting of waste thermal energy.This grant will enable the installation of an "electron-beam lithography" system in an advanced general-purpose fabrication laboratory. Electron beam lithography uses an electron beam rather than light to expose the resist and has the same advantages of resolution that an electron microscope has over a light microscope. This system will allow the production of the tiniest structures over large samples but does not need an expensive "negative" to be made. Instead, like a laser printer, the pattern to be written is defined in software, so that there is no cost associated with changing the shape if only one object of a particular shape is to be made. The electron beam lithography system is therefore perfect for making small things for scientific research or for making small numbers of a specialized device for a small company. The tool will be housed in a laboratory which allows the processing of the widest possible range of materials, from precious gem diamonds a few millimetres across to disks of exotic semiconductor the size of dinner plates.The tool will be used by about 200 people from all over the UK and the world. By running continuously the tool will be very inexpensive to use, allowing the power of leading-edge lithography to be used by anyone, from students to small businesses. The tool will be supported and operated by a large dedicated team of extremely experienced staff, so that the learning curve to applying the most advanced incarnation of the most powerful technology of the age will be reduced to a matter of a few weeks.