Burn J. Lin

Burn J. Lin is recognized as a technical leader in the semiconductor manufacturing industry and most responsible for 193-nm immersion lithography. In 2002, Dr. Lin proposed immersion lithography, which is a resolution-enhancement process that replaces the air gap between the lens and the wafer surface with a liquid medium, such as purified water. Through Dr. Lin’s perseverance in convincing the industry that a change was needed, immersion lithography was adopted, and manufacturing of 45-nm feature sizes and smaller have become possible.

He has continued the cause for immersion lithography with groundbreaking papers that have mapped out scaling laws for super-high numerical aperture immersion optics, and he has led the development of defect-reduction methods to address concerns regarding the technology. As a result, immersion lithography has quickly become a manufacturing technology in just a few years.

An IEEE Life Fellow, Dr. Lin is currently the senior director of the Nanopatterning Technology Division at TSMC, Ltd., the world’s largest silicon foundry.