This volume of ALSNews was originally published on February 19, 2003. Links and information may be outdated.
Table of Contents
- EUV Lithography Work Recognized
- “Father of STXM” Janos Kirz to Spend Sabbatical at ALS
- Send in Your Abstracts Now for SRI 2003
- UEC Corner: Notes from the Users’ Executive Committee
- Compendium Abstracts Still Being Accepted
- Who’s in Town: A Sampling of ALS Users
- Operations Update
1. EUV LITHOGRAPHY WORK RECOGNIZED
(Contact: DTAttwood@lbl.gov)
A multilab effort to develop extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography into the computer-chip-making technology of the future has been recognized with a 2003 Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Excellence in Technology Transfer Award. Researchers from Berkeley Lab’s Center for X-Ray Optics (CXRO), utilizing synchrotron light from ALS beamlines, played a crucial role in developing the technology that uses coated mirrors to bend and focus EUV light, which can then be used to define the ever-shrinking circuit features to be etched onto silicon chips. In fact, in a related development, CXRO researchers have reported the production of line widths as small as 39 nm using EUV lithography, compared to the lower limit of about 65 nm using current techniques. This work was recently highlighted in Physics News Update, a digest of physics news published by the American Institute of Physics (http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2003/624.html).
The judges for the FLC award consider the significance of the technology’s impact on society as well as the success of the transfer of the technology from research lab to the public. The highly successful EUV project is a joint effort involving Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia National Laboratories as well as a consortium of commercial partners including Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, IBM, Infineon, Micron Technologies, and Motorola. Largely because of this collaboration, EUV lithography is widely regarded as the most promising candidate to replace current lithography methods, making possible microprocessors 10 times faster with up to 10 times as many active transistors and memory chips that can store 40 times more information. Benefits would include such things as high-speed Internet access, instant global communications, throw-away microprocessors (smart cards), microcontrollers for more intelligent machinery, more powerful supercomputers for scientific and defense research, and countless other innovations.
2. “FATHER OF STXM” JANOS KIRZ TO SPEND SABBATICAL AT ALS
Janos Kirz, who is credited with being the “Father of STXM” (scanning transmission x-ray microscopy), will be spending a 10-month sabbatical at the ALS this year to perform soft x-ray diffraction experiments at Beamline 9.0.1. Kirz, a Distinguished Professor of Physics at Stony Brook University in New York, is the recipient of numerous honors and awards. In addition to pioneering the development of STXM instruments utilizing zone-plate lenses for x-ray focusing, he has participated in two R&D 100 award-winnning teams: one in 1990 with Harald Ade et al. for the development of scanning photoemission microscopy (SPEM) and another in 1999 with Chris Jacobsen et al. for the development of cryo-STXM. His latest work involves a technique for reconstructing high-resolution images of frozen, hydrated yeast cells from recorded soft x-ray diffraction patterns. According to Kirz, because such experiments are extremely “hungry for brightness,” the ALS is the ideal place to be.
In a way, this is a homecoming for Kirz, who first came to Berkeley in 1957 after the Soviet army suppressed the 1956 uprising in his native Hungary, leading to the exodus of 2% of the country’s population. Kirz went on to spend his undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctorate years at Berkeley and worked in high-energy physics here as part of the Alvarez Group. However, in 1972 Kirz was sidetracked into what he says had been a “dead subject”—zone-plate lenses—by David Sayre’s suggestion of using electron beams to produce the precisely spaced concentric diffraction zones that such lenses use to focus x rays. Kirz shared his expertise on the subject with the ALS community in two standing-room-only talks last month. In the first talk, he reviewed the history of zone plates and discussed current developments, including photon sieves and compound lenses. His second talk focused on the past, present, and future of high-resolution microscopes based on the detection of transmitted, scattered, or emitted photons.
3. SEND IN YOUR ABSTRACTS NOW FOR SRI 2003
(Contacts: sri03@lbl.gov)
The deadline for submitting abstracts for oral or poster presentations at the Eighth International Conference on Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation (SRI 2003) in San Francisco, August 25-29, 2003, is fast approaching! All meeting participants are invited to submit abstracts by Monday, March 3, 2003. Submission instructions and the abstract submission form are available at http://www.sri2003.lbl.gov/html/abstracts.html.
The main SRI 2003 Web page at http://www.sri2003.lbl.gov/ has additional information, including a description of the meeting site; a preliminary program; online registration; accommodation, travel, and visa tips; tourist links; and a companion sightseeing program.
4. UEC CORNER: NOTES FROM THE USERS’ EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
by Jennifer Doudna
(Contact: doudna@uclink.berkeley.edu)
The UEC invites feedback from users regarding future directions for the ALS. We had a meeting with ALS management on February 18 to discuss a “20-year road map” for the ALS, which will also be presented to the Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences at the end of the month. Check future issues of ALSNews for details on the road map. Also, as we begin thinking about the Users’ Meeting scheduled for the fall, users are invited to suggest topics for presentations and workshops.
5. COMPENDIUM ABSTRACTS STILL BEING ACCEPTED
It’s not too late to submit abstracts for the 2002 ALS Compendium of User Abstracts. The deadline has been extended to March 3. All users or user groups (including ALS staff members) should submit a one- to three-page abstract (including figures) describing each project conducted at the ALS during calendar year 2002, whether published, unpublished, or in progress.
Submission information (including author guidelines, file specifications, and a submission form) can be found on the Web at http://alspubs.lbl.gov/Compendium_old. If you encounter problems uploading files via the Web, please notify Lori Tamura as soon as possible (LSTamura@lbl.gov, 510-486-6172). We are currently in the process of indexing the abstracts and sending out acknowledgments; we ask for your patience as we work through the backlog of files that were received by yesterday’s deadline. Many thanks to all those who submitted their work in a timely manner.
6. WHO’S IN TOWN: A SAMPLING OF ALS USERS
Following are some of the experimenters who will be collecting data during the next two weeks at the ALS.
Beamline 1.4.3
Simon Clark (Berkeley Lab)
Raymond Jeanloz (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Hoi-Ying Holman (Berkeley Lab)
Beamline 4.0.2
Luis Miguel Garcia Vinuesa (Univ. of Zaragoza, Spain)
Boris Sinkovic (Univ. of Connecticut)
Jo Stohr (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory)
Beamline 6.3.1
Idir Mourad (Univ. Paris-Sud)
Beamline 7.0.1
Z.Q. Qiu (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Byron Freelon (Berkeley Lab)
M. Zahid Hasan (Princeton Univ.)
Changyoung Kim (Yonsei Univ., Korea)
Beamline 7.3.1.1
Geoffrey Thornton (Manchester Univ., UK)
Beamline 8.0.1
Richard Saykally (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Beamline 8.3.1
Cornelia Bellamacina, Neil Grodsky, Terence Hui, Isabelle Lehoux, Al Stewart (SUGEN, Inc.)
Bill Harries, Peter Hwang, Maia Vinogradova (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Jonathan Parrish, Jason Lamore, Craig Garen, Ross Edwards (Univ. of Alberta, Canada)
Karolin Luger, Srinivas Chakravarty, Cindy White, Young-Jun Park, Gundimella Swamy (Colorado State Univ.)
Beamline 9.3.2
Suntharampillai Thevuthasan (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
Miquel Salmeron (Berkeley Lab)
Beamline 10.0.1
Nora Berrah (Western Michigan Univ.)
Laurent Duda (Uppsala Univ., Sweden)
7. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(Contact: Lampo@lbl.gov)
For the user runs of January 28 – February 2, February 4 – 9, and February 12 – 16, the beam reliability (time delivered/time scheduled) was 99%. Of the scheduled beam, 91% was delivered to completion without interruption. There were no significant outages.
Long-term and weekly operations schedules are available on the Web (http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/schedules/index.html). Requests for special operations use of the “scrubbing” shift should be sent to Bruce Samuelson (ALS-CR@lbl.gov, x4738) by 1:00 p.m. Friday. The Accelerator Status Hotline at (510) 486-6766 (ext. 6766 from Lab phones) features a recorded message giving up-to-date information on the operational status of the accelerator. A Web page showing the ring status in real time can be found at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/status/.
ALSNews is a biweekly electronic newsletter to keep users informed about developments at the Advanced Light Source, a national user facility located at Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California. To be placed on the mailing list, send your email address to ALSNews@lbl.gov. We welcome suggestions for topics and content. Submissions are due the Friday before the issue date.
LBNL/PUB-875
Editors: lstamura@lbl.gov, alrobinson@lbl.gov, amgreiner@lbl.gov
This work was supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098.