3rd year graduate student Jane Keth holding a piece of silicon wafer in front of the Bergsman Lab high-throughput molecular layer deposition reactor. (David Bergsman / University of Washington)
November 19, 2025
Semiconductor devices are a critical component of the many electronics that power our daily lives. The technological innovations that have driven their widespread success have relied on manufacturing smaller and smaller integrated circuits to build more powerful devices. The next generation of integrated circuit development will require features smaller than 10 nanometers, something that is not currently possible in today’s commercial manufacturing landscape.
Following support from a UW Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute (MolES) pilot award , UW professors David Bergsman and Aniruddh Vashisth have received a National Science Foundation Future Manufacturing award for a project that aims to address the 10 nanometer challenge in the field of semiconductor manufacturing.
Their research focuses on finding new materials and photoresists to improve the manufacturing process known as extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photolithography. EUV photolithography is a process used to pattern extremely small features on silicon wafers, which are the building blocks of electronic devices. Their project involves creating new photoresists needed for making these patterns using a technique called molecular layer deposition (MLD), which can be used to build ultrathin photoresist films one molecular layer at a time, like stacking Lego bricks at the nanoscale. They will work on modelling the deposition of these MLD-based photoresists and studying what chemical reactions take place when they are exposed to light. By improving these materials, the project seeks to enhance the effectiveness of EUV photolithography, thereby supporting the growth of the semiconductor industry. This advancement is crucial, as it will enable the production of smaller, faster, and more efficient electronic devices, which are in high demand in today’s technology-driven world.
“The MolES pilot award allowed us to build an interdisciplinary team for this project,” said Bergsman. “Researching new methods of EUV photolithography and simulating them in the Vashisth lab gives us the ability to quickly identify promising materials to further test.”
“Our lab has successfully shown that the proposed hybrid molecular layer deposition technique will let us test and identify multiple promising photoresist chemistries that could be used in the future of manufacturing of semiconductors,” said Vashisth. “The initial pilot award from MolES has given our group the opportunity to work towards solving critical challenges and training the next generation of researchers in the semiconductor industry.”
Additionally, the project includes educational initiatives to inspire and prepare students for careers in the semiconductor industry. These efforts align with the goals of the US CHIPS Act, which aims to strengthen the domestic semiconductor workforce. Bergsman is also a Co-Investigator in the U.S.-Japan University Partnership for Workforce Advancement and Research & Development in Semiconductors (UPWARDS) for the Future . UPWARDS aims to cultivate a more diverse, robust and highly skilled talent pipeline for the international semiconductor workforce and drives emerging research while increasing the pipeline of students studying a semiconductor curriculum.