Peter Trefonas, Ph.D., corporate fellow in Dow Electronic Materials, has recently been elected a Fellow of SPIE, for achievements in design for manufacturing and compact modeling.
SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, will promote 73 new Fellows of the Society this year, to recognize the significant scientific and technical contributions of each in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics, and imaging. SPIE Fellows are honored for their technical achievements and for their service to the general optics community and to SPIE in particular.
Trefonas has proven himself to be a leader in advanced lithographic technology with numerous highly cited and pioneering papers in key areas of advanced lithography. He contributed to the fundamental investigations of resist chemical mechanisms, such as polyphotolysis, a mechanism of nonlinear development and dissolution rate models based on first principles. He also contributed papers on percolation and reactive diffusion mechanisms. Trefonas authored some of the first papers on shot noise and stochastic effects, as well as the first paper on fractal analysis of development, and the first paper on information theory of lithography. He is coauthor on a simple method to measure the photoacid quantum efficiency, and contributed to a prominent paper on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) stochastics and stochastic development model. He has also published groundbreaking work on deterministic bottom-up/top-down materials designs.
Trefonas has given extensive service to the global optics community, through published literature and his role in technical conferences. He authored significant sections of the ITRS Semiconductor Roadmap, content dedicated to emerging materials. He organized and chaired a conference on emerging display materials for the Materials Research Society, chaired multiple conferences on microlithography for IEEE, and organized and chaired a conference on directed self-assembly (DSA) and block copolymers for the American Physical Society. As a lecturer, he has given full-day tutorials on lithography and antireflectant coatings at multiple locations in the US, Europe, and Asia. He is also helping to build up the next generation of innovators, responsible for hiring and mentoring over 40 scientists who are currently active and contributing to the science and materials of great interest to the optical community.
A long-time member of SPIE, Trefonas has also given significant service to the Society. He has published 41 papers in the Proceedings of SPIE and has published papers in the Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS. He is currently an active reviewer of papers on lithographic materials for SPIE journals.
Trefonas’ work has been recognized with many prestigious honors and awards. Among them are the Society of Chemical Industry Perkin Medal for contributions in industrial chemistry, the American Chemical Society Heroes of Chemistry Award for organic fast plasma etch antireflectants, the C. Grant Willson Award for best oral paper at SPIE Advanced Lithography, Rohm and Haas Technology Awards for antireflectants and 248nm resists, the Shipley R&D Innovation Award for i-line photoresists, and the Monsanto Ex Obscura Award for creativity in innovation. He has also recently been elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Trefonas will be recognized as a new SPIE Fellow at SPIE Advanced Lithography later this month in San Jose, California.