September 1, 2013
S95-058 : Negative Electron Affinity Photocathodes as High Performance Electron Sources (1995?)
Researchers in Prof. R. Fabian Pease's laboratory have developed a patented negative electron affinity (NEA) photocathode as a high performance electron source for instruments such as electron microscopes and electron beam lithography tools. This technology uses the NEA to achieve emission from one or more areas of the cathode surface with widths of 10 microns or less. The production of small emission areas on a large flat photocathode facilitates the production of multiple, independently-modulated electron beams that can perform in parallel.
Comment. This technology from 1995 is on the Stanford TechFinder Featured Technologies page today in 2013. Why would it be posted now?
The Principal Investigator, Dr Fabian W. Pease, the William Ayer Professor of Electrical Engineering, has a track record of spinning technologies out of his lab. The technology in this OTL posting is for efficiently creating electron beams with high focus has been used for electron microscopes and beam lithography. Intevac picked up the patent invented by Aaron Wolf and Kenneth Costello.
Looking at the Visible Legacy graph and timeline in Navigator, we see the lab continues to receive patents and spin out companies such as Jetalon with Francisco Machuca. Jetalon Solutions, Inc., a California-based supplier of fluid metrology products, was just acquired by Entegris. Another company is Brion Technologies, Inc., co-founded by Jun Ye and now a subsidiary of ASML.
The 1995 patents could be interesting and fundamental, check it out, but to me they lead to looking at what's new. Dr. Pease's lab is now working on Multiple-axis Electron Beam Lithography, Image processing, DNA Sequencing and Pathogen Detection. The Lab's current research is definitely worth a look.
