Peter Trefonas: Chemistry is key player in lithography process
Smaller feature sizes and increasing density have been the result of innovative chemical solutions to enable lithography advances, says Dow Corporate Fellow.
Peter Trefonas is a Corporate Fellow in The Dow Chemical Company, where he works within the Dow Electronic Materials Business Group.
Trefonas made major contributions to the development of many successful products which are used in the production of integrated circuits spanning multiple device design generations, from 2 micron to 14 nm node technologies. These include photoresists, antireflectant coatings, underlayers, developers, ancillary products, and environmentally safer green products. These electronic materials have had a high commercial impact, and have helped to facilitate the progress of the Information Age.
He is an inventor on 61 US patents, has over 25 additional published active U.S. patent applications, is an author of 99 journal and technical publications, and is a recipient of the 2014 ACS Heroes of Chemistry Award and the 2013 SPIE C. Grant Willson Best Paper Award in Patterning Materials and Processes. He is a Senior Member of SPIE.
Trefonas earned his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry with Prof. Robert West at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985 and his Bachelor of Science in chemistry at the University of New Orleans in 1980. His research career began at Monsanto Electronics Materials Company. He then co-founded a startup called Aspect Systems Inc., which acquired lithographic chemicals technology spun off from Monsanto. He continued in electronic materials R&D as his career moved via acquisitions by Shipley Company, Rohm and Haas Company, and Dow. Prior to graduate school, Trefonas was also the creator of several commercial computer games which were popular on early microcomputer platforms.
