A student team recognized at the recent American Nuclear Society Student Conference for research that could result in smaller computer chips is the inaugural recipient of the Daniel F. Hang Outstanding Senior Design Award in NPRE.
Seniors Shane M. Keniley, Amanda M. Lietz, Pawel A. Piotrowicz, and Gianluca A. Panici were presented the award at the 2014 NPRE/ANS Honors Banquet held April 25. The team earlier had received the Best Paper Award in the Materials Science and Technology Section of the 2014 ANS Student Conference held in early April in State College, Pennsylvania. Their winning paper was entitled “Plasma Synthesized Lanthanide Particles for Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV).”
The students’ design details a system that would create fuel elements for lithography of microchips. The process would drastically reduce the size of computer chips for electronic devices, thus making it possible to reduce the size of the devices themselves.
Industry fabricates computer chips by patterning them with light (lithography). The chips become smaller by reducing the width of the trenches patterned by this light. Current industry standards employ a 193 nanometer excimer laser to pattern the trenches. Researchers predict EUV light will be able to decrease that size to 13.5 nanometers within one to three years. The students’ system of using BEUV (Beyond EUV) light would further reduce the size to 6.5 nanometers.
The students’ research involves the use of terbium – a rare earth metal that is malleable, ductile and very hard – and a composite plastic to create fuel particles for use in BEUV lithography. After dropping one-by-one, and accelerating, the fuel particles would be shot by a powerful laser, strong enough to highly ionize the terbium. As these ions recombine with electrons, they would emit the BEUV light, which would then be focused by mirrors to cut trenches in the computer chips. A composite particle increases the efficiency of this process, creating more intense BEUV light than would be possible with a pure terbium particle.
The Hang award was created in honor of the late Emeritus Prof. Daniel F. Hang, one of the Department’s founders. Hang, who died at the age of 95 in December 2013, was passionate about nuclear engineering design, and emphasized the coupling of economics analysis with successful design work. He also strongly advocated students becoming licensed Professional Engineers.