https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/13/canon_nanoimprint_litho/

That would be cool, go directly from e-beam to tiny stamps without all
those tin droplets and optics.

On 10/15/2023 2:37 PM, John Larkin wrote:
> https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/13/canon_nanoimprint_litho/
>
> That would be cool, go directly from e-beam to tiny stamps without all
> those tin droplets and optics.
>

"[...] physically pressing a mask imprinted with a circuit design onto
the resist layer [...]", without needing optics.

Wait ... how do you make the mask?

On Tuesday, October 17, 2023 at 12:35:08 AM UTC+11, Bob Engelhardt wrote:
> On 10/15/2023 2:37 PM, John Larkin wrote:
> > https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/13/canon_nanoimprint_litho/
> >
> > That would be cool, go directly from e-beam to tiny stamps without all
> > those tin droplets and optics.
> >
> "[...] physically pressing a mask imprinted with a circuit design onto
> the resist layer [...]", without needing optics.
>
> Wait ... how do you make the mask?

Australia's plastic banknotes are marked with holograms made by pressing a metal block up against the plastic. You seem to be able to get about ten thousand banknotes out of one metal block.

You prepare the metal block by coating it with electron-beam-sensitive resist, write the pattern you want into the resist with an electron beam microfabricator - in Australia, a Cambridge Instruments EBMF 10.5. These were mostly sold to semiconductor fabs to make optical masks, and the other one sold to Australia did go to the AWA fab in Sydney.

Once you've got the pattern into the resist you wash the resist that wasn't exposed and etch the metal away from the unprotected areas, just as you would for an optical mask. Optlcal masks use a thin layer of metal and the etched bits lose all that layer.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

On Mon, 16 Oct 2023 09:34:59 -0400, Bob Engelhardt
<BobEngelhardt@comcast.net> wrote:

>On 10/15/2023 2:37 PM, John Larkin wrote:
>> https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/13/canon_nanoimprint_litho/
>>
>> That would be cool, go directly from e-beam to tiny stamps without all
>> those tin droplets and optics.
>>
>
>"[...] physically pressing a mask imprinted with a circuit design onto
>the resist layer [...]", without needing optics.
>
>Wait ... how do you make the mask?

Direct e-beam. Ebeam is how masks are made.

Chips can be made with ebeam lithography, but it's too slow for
production.

On Tuesday, October 17, 2023 at 1:16:13 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Oct 2023 09:34:59 -0400, Bob Engelhardt
> <BobEng...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> >On 10/15/2023 2:37 PM, John Larkin wrote:
> >> https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/13/canon_nanoimprint_litho/
> >>
> >> That would be cool, go directly from e-beam to tiny stamps without all
> >> those tin droplets and optics.
> >>
> >
> >"[...] physically pressing a mask imprinted with a circuit design onto
> >the resist layer [...]", without needing optics.
> >
> >Wait ... how do you make the mask?
> Direct e-beam. Ebeam is how masks are made.
>
> Chips can be made with e-beam lithography, but it's too slow for production.

Too slow for mass production, but it was used for some very fast parts back when it was the only way to get very narrow track and gaps.

European SiliconStructures bought five Bell Lab shaped beam electron beam microfabricators to make small volumes of integrated circuits by direct writing.

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/01/business/chip-maker-without-a-country.html

It was a financial disaster because the machines were a factor of five slower than Bell Labs had claimed. I spent a coupe of years working on a competitive machine at Cambridge Instruments - Thompson has sold us what they thought was a pre-production prototype, but turned out to be a proof of principle machine which needed a lot more work to get it to a manufacturable state than we had budgeted for, or could afford.

Texas Instruments had a similar machine for writing a single layer onto a programmable integrated circuit which doesn't seem to have generated a lot of business either.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney