Focusing nanotechnology on the human scale

摘要

The semiconductor industry has pioneered the development and application of nanoscale technologies, but it has learned the hard way that the most elegant technology is worthless without a killer application. Most of the industry's propositions have long since been reduced to dollars and cents, the universally applicable measure of value in our economic system. Examples of nanotech-nology applications illustrate the point. Tens of thousands of dollars may be invested in a single wafer before it completes the manufacturing process, so finding process excursions early is vital. While electron microscopes can find defects caused by contamination or other extraneous events, focused ion beams (FIB) give process engineers the ability to cut into the wafer to analyze subsurface defects and 3D structures. Combined ion- and electron-beam instruments can expose subsurface features and acquire high-resolution images on a single platform.