To continue the patterning roadmap, many techniques were considered back in the day, including 157 litho v. NIL v. EUV v. Direct Self Assembly. For NIL, the biggest issue was defect density...why NIL found a niche in disk drive applications (Toshiba early champion) where you have a lot of redundancy built in
Because of EUV's insane cost / complexity, many older litho techniques (NIL, Direct Self Assembly) are making a comeback...NIL is a great option for lower cost patterning applications, like optical/photonic components (Magic Leap etc)
Because of EUV's insane cost / complexity, many older litho techniques (NIL, Direct Self Assembly) are making a comeback...NIL is a great option for lower cost patterning applications, like optical/photonic components (Magic Leap etc)