UT Austin Shrinks Semiconductor Printing to Research Scale

• Semiconductor manufacturing sits at the foundation of modern electronics, yet the barrier to entry is so extreme that meaningful research remains out of reach for most institutions. Extreme Ultraviolet lithography, the dominant technology for printing circuits onto silicon, relies on machines costing upward of $200 million that occupy entire rooms.  Faculty at the University of…

Semiconductor manufacturing sits at the foundation of modern electronics, yet the barrier to entry is so extreme that meaningful research remains out of reach for most institutions. Extreme Ultraviolet lithography, the dominant technology for printing circuits onto silicon, relies on machines costing upward of $200 million that occupy entire rooms. Faculty at the University of Texas at Austin‘s (UT Austin) Cockrell School of Engineering, working under the National Science Foundation‘s Future of Semiconductors program, set out to change that equation. The result: a tabletop EUV device built from stripped-down components, paired with a new printing technique that compresses days of processing into minutes. Researchers work with equipment in the Cockrell School of Engineering cleanroom. Pho