Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Stock Swap -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nigel bates who wrote (17222)	8/14/2001 1:15:31 PM
From: Andrew Vance	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 17305

I am discussing this offline with Bilberry, and there are some merits. but to be honest, I was very impressed with x-ray lithography more than 15 years ago, when I saw the first x-ray stepper at SEMICON. I also kept tabs on the X-ray storage ring facility in Europe over the years. X-ray lithography was way ahead of its time (I think the company's name was Micronics, but it has been way too long) at that time, and traditional lithography was able to be extended, pushing x-ray out, as well as e-beam. Over the years, one of the things that puzzled me was when optical lithography would die and the industry would be forced to move to e-beam or x-ray. I haven't had a clue for 10 years, since the advances made in traditional lithography always led to more advances. Better resists, better lenses, better reticles, better processes, and now we enter a real amusing phase of the industry; distorted patterns. Phase Shift masks are really amazing. for years lithography has been modeled relative to the aberrations that occur as reticles become slits and apertures themselves, and the wavelengths of light passing through them create distortions. This all started with square contacts and vias which were squares on the design, square on the reticles, and wound up being starry, oval, or circular on the wafer, due to exposure, lenses, or development processing. Now with phase shifting and other techniques (diagnol lines are now possible), we design weird patterns and transfer them to the reticles such that the photolithography process distorts those distortions to create the patterns we really want. I guess in this situation, two wrings do make a right<GGG>. So as we move forward, there is definitely a place for x-ray and EUV, but it is the timing that I cannot pinpoint. And with x-ray, there are still some bugs to be worked out in the reticle or mask generation arena. I do like Bilberry's comment about JMAR possibly finding a niche market with GaAs. This has potential. Finally, JMAR has been a tropic of discussion for many years, on and off this thread, but they never seem to get it off the ground in the form of price performance. The stock was a stellar performer in 2000, quadrupling in price int he early months, but then declined back to its pre-run up levels over the rest of the year. The chart really needs to be looked at and studied. Andrew