Laboratory captures three R&D 100 Awards

Contact: Todd Hanson, tahanson@lanl.gov, (505) 665-2085

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LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 12, 2001 -- Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory have captured three of R&D Magazine's 2001 R&D 100 Awards. These latest winners bring the Laboratory's total to 68 awards over the past 13 years. The projects recognized this year span a diverse range of scientific and technical areas -- from innovative manufacturing techniques and personal safety to revolutionary quantum physics.

Congratulating the Los Alamos winners, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said, "I'm proud of the award-winning work done at Los Alamos. These accomplishments demonstrate the value of government-funded research to the Nation."

Director John Browne noted that "many of these award-winning technical innovations were born out of Los Alamos' goal to create science that truly serves society. Los Alamos is, and will remain, home to some of the best science and scientific minds in the world. I believe these recent awards attest to that idea. "

The R&D 100 awards program, now in its 39th year, is designed to honor significant commercial promise in products, materials or processes developed by the international research and development community. Each year, R&D Magazine recognizes the world's top 100 scientific and technological advances with awards for innovations showing the most significant commercial potential. Over the years, the R&D 100 awards have become one measure of the Los Alamos' contribution to society. Technologies are nominated in open competition and judged by technical experts selected by the Illinois-based magazine.

The three Los Alamos National Laboratory technologies receiving R&D 100 awards this year are:

SCORR -- Supercritical CO2 Resist Remover

The Supercritical Carbon dioxide Resist Remover, or SCORR, is a novel method for processing computer chips that uses supercritical carbon dioxide to remove a coating called photoresist. The SCORR system works without the use of toxic chemicals and has the potential to save the semiconductor manufacturing industry tens of millions of gallons of water per day.

Integrated circuit manufacturers rely heavily on photolithography to create the desired features in chip circuitry. The process requires the selective removal of hardened coatings, or resist, from a wafer, leaving the intricate circuitry intact. Current wet-stripping technologies apply either corrosive combinations of sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide or organic solvents. Both systems produce profuse amounts of waste. Under moderate pressure and temperature, carbon dioxide gas can be converted into its liquid, or supercritical, phase in which it has the properties of both a gas and a liquid. Supercritical carbon dioxide diffuses into the tiniest pores of a material like a gas, but because it has a high density like a liquid, it can dissolve substances and carry them away. These combined properties make supercritical carbon dioxide an excellent solvent for many applications like resist removal.

The Los Alamos' SCORR system is actually a mixture of supercritical carbon dioxide and a nontoxic, nonhazardous organic solvent modifier that flows over the chip surface through a novel, pulsed-flow system. In tests, SCORR typically strips photoresist from wafers in less than half the time required for wet-stripping. The carbon dioxide in the SCORR system is also a closed system, which means that no waste, other than the waste resist, is generated.

Tandem-Configured Solid-State Optical Limiter

Working in collaboration with Gel-Tech Inc. of Orlando, Fla., the Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers in Orlando, Fla. and the U.S. Army, Los Alamos scientists have developed high-performance, solid-state optical limiters capable of protecting the human eye from concentrated beams of intense light, such as those produced by lasers.

The optical limiter device looks like a simple colored lens, but it is capable of reducing, by as much as 400 times, the intensity of beams of light from devices like lasers. The limiter consists of a special dye embedded onto a polymer matrix. Because it is made from solid materials, optical limiters can be designed in many colors or shapes.

The optical limiter works much like photochromic eyeglass lenses, which automatically darken or lighten in response to changing daylight conditions. Unlike conventional photochromic devices, however, they respond to intense light much faster-a reaction time of less than a picosecond-and take only a millisecond to recover. The device offers protection from light even more intense than concentrated sunlight. The work was funded by the Army Research Office under a Small Business Technology Transfer grant.

Free-Space Quantum Cryptography

Free-Space Quantum Cryptography is a communication system that uses tiny bits of light to send "quantum keys" through the air over long distances. Quantum cryptographic keys are transmitted by photons randomly polarized to states representing ones and zeroes. These polarized photon transmissions create a random string of numbers known only to the sender and receiver. This string of numbers becomes the quantum cryptographic key that locks or unlocks the encrypted messages that are sent via normal communication channels. Because the photons cannot be intercepted without being destroyed, and therefore tipping off the receiver, the quantum cryptographic key is perhaps the most practicable means available for creating unbreakable data encryption systems.

In 1999, Los Alamos researchers set a world record sending a quantum key through a 31-mile-long optical fiber. While this distance proved far enough to create networks connecting closely spaced government offices or local branches of a bank, at greater distances the signal loss in optical fiber increases until the photons are absorbed. To achieve longer distances, Los Alamos researchers developed a free-space quantum cryptography system that would allows keys to be sent through the air. The 2001 R&D Award is based on an initial 1.6-kilometer free-space transmission distance in daylight, but plans are underway to test the system at distances of up to 10 kilometers.

The success of the Los Alamos free-space system could accelerate the development of new systems for secure satellite transmissions as well as encryption support for so-called "last mile" wireless or optical ground-based communications of special interest to the financial community. The Los Alamos technology is intended to serve as a model on which to base a global satellite quantum key distribution system.

A banquet for the 2001 R&D 100 winners is scheduled for October 4 in Chicago at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.

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