TU Delft and ASML take ultrasound to the nanoscale

As chip structures keep shrinking, there’s less room for manufacturing errors with every generation. Only through a complex interplay of metrology, number crunching and real-time correction mechanisms are chipmakers able to keep yields up. Naturally, this is big business, one that ASML has embraced enthusiastically. It’s, therefore, no surprise that the Veldhoven-based equipment manufacturer has taken an interest in a new imaging technique that, unlike all other non-destructive imaging techniques, promises to be capable of peaking a few micron underneath surfaces.

The concept, which is like performing an ultrasound on the nanoscale, was conceived by Gerard Verbiest, currently an assistant professor at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). “Working on sub-surface atomic force microscopy for my doctoral thesis, I realized that combining AFM with ultrasound should yield a much better way of mapping 3D nanostructures,” he says.