Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

Prerequisites

This course has no official prerequisites. However, we do assume a very thorough knowledge of the 1st-year basic sciences and a solid grasp of the EE or ME undergraduate curriculum. The class makes use of elementary concepts from optics, mechanics, special relativity, Fourier transforms, and chemistry.

Academic Conduct

Collaboration is permitted (but not necessarily encouraged) on all assignments except the final assignment. This collaboration should take the form of discussion of problem approaches and solutions, but each student should write up his or her own solutions individually, without consulting others. The completed assignment should indicate if anyone outside of the teaching staff was consulted, and if so, who.

The final assignment should consist of strictly individual work.

Prior year's lecture notes of other students may be consulted, however prior year's work on assignments may not be consulted.

Assessment and Grading

Student's performance will be assessed primarily based on their performance on the final homework assignment (distributed in Ses #20, and due in Ses #26). This assignment will comprise at least 50% of the course grade. The remainder will be made up of the remaining homework assignments (of which there will be 13). The final assignment will be weighted more heavily in instances where the student's performance on it differs markedly (either positively or negatively) from their performance in the remainder in the class.

There will be no final examination for this class.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of 6.781J/2.391J, students will know, and understand the principles of nanofabrication and materials analysis methods including:

• Optical Microscopy
• Optical Lithography
• Electron-Beam Microscopy
• Electron-Beam Lithography
• Ion-Beam Microscopy
• Ion-Beam Lithography
• Scanning-Probe Microscopy
• Scanning-Probe Lithography
• Thin-film Patterning using Aqueous, Ion, and Plasma Etching Methods
• Thin-film Patterning using Lift-off and Electroplating
• Substrate Cleaning
• Cleanroom Principles

Students will understand the concepts of lithographic and microscopic resolution, and be able to apply this knowledge to calculate resolution limits for lithographic and imaging/inspection tools. They will be able to define the concept of contrast and a transfer function for an optical system, and explain their role in both microscopy and lithography. They will know the factors that establish practical resolution limits for major microscopy and lithography approaches and explain the impact of these factors. Students will also be able to comprehend, evaluate, and critique articles on nanolithography and microscopy from the recent literature. Students will understand how nanofabrication tools are applied to fabricate nanostructures in materials and be able to analyze and evaluate proposed approaches to material processing.

Calendar

First, please note an important conceptual point about the class schedule: We distinguish a class (which occurs on a set date and time) from a lecture (which is a discussion of a single conceptually related set of topics). A class can contain a single or multiple lectures covered in whole or in part. Similarly, a lecture can span multiple classes.