Carl Zeiss announces winners of photography competition “Light is my language”

Australian photographer Timothy Poulton took the picture at the Bellinger and Kalang rivers in Urunga in New South Wales, Australia. The image shows a timber footbridge that, thanks to a clever perspective, appears endless, disappearing into the horizon. The footbridge is framed by a yellow-violet sea of color in which the sunrise and river are immersed. The photograph symbolizes a moment of absolute serenity.



No effort was too great for Poulton in order to take his picture. He waited several hours with his ZEISS Makro-Planar T* 2/50 ZF.2 in order to capture the perfect light. “’A Pier Too Far’ stands for life’s journey with all its twists and turns and highs and lows. At the same time, the light emphasizes the beauty of the Australian coastline,” says Poulton, who lives in Sydney. “I would have never thought my picture had a chance among the many high-quality submissions. All the waiting was more than worth it.”



“The Carl Zeiss jury nominated the image to be among the top 10 because light has been used outstandingly as a design element. The picture has a very interesting atmosphere of light, with soft color gradients and strong contrasts. The conceptual composition of the image was excellent and the technical execution flawless,” said Martin Klottig, Marketing Manager of the Camera Lens Division at Carl Zeiss AG.



http://www.swpp.co.uk/professional_imagemaker/news/Carl_Zeiss_winners.htm



BMBF Joint Project for New Chip Fabrication Technology – Key Milestone Successfully Achieved



Results will launch a new era in chip fabrication.



German companies global technology leaders in core processes for the manufacture of integrated circuits.



BERLIN/Germany, OBERKOCHEN/Germany, 11.03.2011.

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is sponsoring an extensive joint project headed by Carl Zeiss on EUV lithography (Extreme Ultra Violet). This new technology has major potential to further miniaturize microchips and will play a key role in increasing their performance in the future. This project is intended to drive EUV lithography from basic industrial research to a fully capable production technology for the volume fabrication of chips. The BMBF is sponsoring the three-year project with a total of 16.4 million euros.



In addition to two companies from the Carl Zeiss Group, six other German companies and research institutes are involved in the project. Winfried Kaiser, Senior Vice President of Product Strategy for Lithography Optics at Carl Zeiss emphasizes the significance of this project by saying that “There is an excellent research and development landscape in Germany for EUV lithography. This project unites and enhances this globally leading know-how, which in the end will create attractive new jobs in Germany.”



The first key milestone was the recent comparison of the current status of EUV lithography with competing methods. The results strengthen the perspectives seen in EUV lithography. Simultaneously, the development steps initiated were verified.



Core process in chip fabrication



Lithography is a key process in chip fabrication that each microchip is subjected to on multiple occasions during production. The functional elements of a microchip are transferred from a mask to a silicon wafer – the substrate material of microchips – by means of complex optical systems. Compared to the existing lithography process, EUV lithography works with a considerably shorter wavelength (13.5 nanometers), which enables much finer details and thus further miniaturization. However, this extremely short wavelength also places completely new demands on the entire lithography infrastructure. For example, the systems must be operated in a vacuum because air or technical gases absorb the irradiation. Mirrors also had to replace lens elements in the optical systems due to material absorption. Furthermore, the demands on cleanliness in the process increase significantly.



As part of the BMBF project, two companies of the Carl Zeiss Group are developing the mirror systems required for the lithography processes and the systems to evaluate and repair lithography masks. The other project partners are IMS CHIPS (Stuttgart), HamaTech APE GmbH & Co KG (Sternenfels), Advanced Mask Technology Center GmbH & Co. KG (AMTC, Dresden), Bruker Advanced Supercon GmbH (Bergisch Gladbach), Dynamic Micro Systems GmbH (Radolfzell) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Systems and Device Technology (FhG IISB, Erlangen), which are responsible for the development of EUV mask integrity, infrastructure and process simulations.



The project is part of the European EXEPT project (Extreme UV Lithography Entry Point Technology) headed by Dutch company ASML. It is a spin-off of the EUREKA Cluster CATRENE for Nanoelectronics. It is the continuation of the very successful cooperation of European companies in the high-tech sector over the past decade, which was effectively bolstered through targeted support measures and which enabled the partners to take the lead in the global competition. This is an outstanding success story for projects in the EUREKA Cluster.







Wafer

The development of EUV lithography is supported by German ministry.