Microsoft-backed startup Lace raises $40m series A

[Daniel Nenni]

Lace, a Norway-headquartered chipmaking equipment startup backed by Microsoft, has raised $40 million in a series A round to develop lithography tools that use a helium atom beam instead of light.

The round was led by Atomico and included Microsoft’s venture arm, M12, Linse Capital, the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation, and Nysnø, while Lace did not disclose its valuation.

Chipmakers such as TSMC and Intel use ASML’s light-based lithography systems, and Lace’s approach could print far smaller features by using a beam about 0.1 nanometer wide.

CEO Bodil Holst told Reuters the method could enable designs about 10 times smaller than today’s tools, and Imec’s John Petersen said the concept could push feature sizes down by an order of magnitude.

Lace has prototypes and aims for a test tool in a pilot fab around 2029, and presented an invited paper at a lithography summit in February.

Lace’s technology stems from a decade of European research

Lace’s atom-beam approach grew out of FabouLACE, a European Union-funded effort to build a mask-less patterning method for a 2-nanometer process.
A related program, NanoLACE, received €3.36 million in funding from 2019 through 2024.

• The European Commission authorized Lace to bring the technology to market by 2031, while imec, a Belgium-based semiconductor R&D institute, will monitor and verify performance.
• 
  
• Public support ties Lace to a wider European push to advance semiconductor manufacturing technology, beyond venture capital funding alone.
• 
  
• The search for ASML alternatives extends beyond atom beams
• Lace’s funding fits into a wider hunt for next-step lithography options outside ASML’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) systems.
• Laser-produced plasma (LPP) EUV sources waste much of their input power, and one retired researcher estimated the overall EUV-LPP electro-optical conversion efficiency may fall below 0.1%.
• 
  
• U.S. startups xLight and Inversion Semiconductor are building particle-accelerator-based light sources, which they say can deliver more output with better energy use 1.
• Research groups in Japan are working on free-electron lasers that could be 10 to 100 times more efficient, adding another path in a global effort to ease lithography bottlenecks.

https://www.techinasia.com/news/microsoft-backed-startup-lace-raises-40m-series-a

 

[user nl]

For those interested in EUVL and Sources, online or go to UC Berkeley, 8-11 June 2026:

https://euvlitho.com/

 

[Fred Chen]

I read about this in the last couple of days. Some key details are missing.

First, how are these atoms produced? Plasma or ion beam?

Second, how are they guided to the wafer? Direct-beam or through a mask? A focused beam will be low throughput. Can they have multiple beams which can be deflected (just like for electron beams)? If a mask is used, won't it get sputtered?

Finally, maybe most importantly, how do they deposit their energy? Direct sputtering or etching? Or chemical reactions in the resist? If it's still chemistry, excess energy (e.g., >10 eV) can still be ionizing and lead to (electron) blur on top of the chemical activation blur.

A diffraction-based image from a remote mask is also expected to be lower contrast than one which is in much closer proximity. Again, mask wear is reminiscent of nanoimprint.

Going back to stochastics, as long as there is some dose (doesn't have to be photons), there's an opportunity for stochastic variations.

 

[user nl]

I read about this in the last couple of days. Some key details are missing.

Here you can find some info with references (e.g. Google Scholar) to the CEO of Lace Technologies, Bodil Holst
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodil_Holst

Here a link to the most recent project report on the EU-funded FET that was concluding end of 2024, not many detailed results/publications are listed though. You can click on the various links on the results link:

Mask Based Lithography for Fast, Large Scale Pattern Generation with Nanometer Resolution | Nanolace | Project | Results | H2020 | CORDIS | European Commission

Deliverables, publications, datasets, software, exploitable results

cordis.europa.eu

 

[U235]

I read about this in the last couple of days. Some key details are missing.

The incident helium has been previously excited to a high metastable state (20 eV internal energy, 1000s lifetime) by DC discharge, but has low kinetic energy (perhaps cooled).

Patterning results from the interaction and decay of the exited atomic state, rather than by collision momentum transfer.

It is mask based.

The claim is a localised energy transfer in the resist, but low sputtering.

 

[user nl]

The incident helium has been previously excited to a high metastable state (20 eV internal energy, 1000s lifetime) by DC discharge, but has low kinetic energy (perhaps cooled).

Patterning results from the interaction and decay of the exited atomic state, rather than by collision momentum transfer.

It is mask based.

The claim is a localised energy transfer in the resist, but low sputtering.

Suppose the metastable He-beam goes with 1500 m/s and has a density of say 10^14 / cm^3 at the msk. At the mask surface, where they hit the mask outside the patterened nanoholes, the He* atoms will be quenched by Penning ionization. Will this not result in catastrofic mask damage from heating. The monolayer mask is in vacuum, so can only deposit energy by radiation?

 

[Fred Chen]

20 eV internal energy could ionize, but the number of electrons wouldn't be as many as EUV. I wonder if this reduces the sensitivity significantly?

 

[user nl]

From Gemini:

20 eV internal energy could ionize, but the number of electrons wouldn't be as many as EUV. I wonder if this reduces the sensitivity significantly?

I mean absorption of the metastable He energy by the nanohole patterned single layer MASK.

Gemini estimates:

1. Secondary Electron Emission (SEE) from $He^*$​

When a metastable helium atom ($2^3S$ state) hits the solid part of the mask, it doesn't just bounce off; it "quenches." Because the internal potential energy of the $He^*$ atom (19.8 eV) is significantly higher than the work function of materials like h-BN (~5–6 eV), it triggers a process called Penning Ionization or Auger Neutralization.

• Mechanism: The excited electron in the helium atom drops to a lower energy state, transferring its energy to an electron in the mask material.
• Emission: This electron is ejected from the surface as a secondary electron.
• Yield: For 2D materials, the secondary electron yield ($\gamma$) is typically 0.05 to 0.2 electrons per incident atom.

2. Calculating the Power Load​

Using your parameters ($n = 10^{14} \text{ /cm}^3$, $v = 1500 \text{ m/s}$):

Step A: Particle Flux ($\Phi$)

$$\Phi = n \cdot v = (10^{14} \text{ atoms/cm}^3) \times (1.5 \times 10^5 \text{ cm/s}) = 1.5 \times 10^{19} \text{ atoms / (cm}^2 \cdot \text{s)}$$
In nanometer terms, this is $150,000$ atoms / ($nm^2 \cdot s$).

Step B: Energy Flux (Power Density)

Each quenched atom deposits its internal potential energy ($19.8 \text{ eV}$) into the mask.

$$P = \Phi \times E_{potential} = (1.5 \times 10^{19}) \times (19.8 \text{ eV}) \times (1.602 \times 10^{-19} \text{ J/eV})$$
$$P \approx \mathbf{47.6 \text{ W/cm}^2}$$

3. Will the Mask Survive?​

A load of $47.6 \text{ W/cm}^2$ is exceptionally high for a single atomic layer. Whether it survives depends on how it manages this heat.

The "Thermal Death" Risk​

• No Bulk Sink: Unlike a TSMC EUV mask, which is 6.35 mm thick and made of LTEM, your mask is a single layer of atoms (~0.34 nm thick). It has almost zero thermal mass to soak up energy.
• Suspended Geometry: In a nanohole mask, the atoms are blocked by the solid monolayer, while others pass through nanoholes whose effective size is reduced by dispersion-force "exclusion zones". The energy from the blocked atoms must travel laterally through the monolayer to reach the support frame.
• Radiation Cooling: At these power levels, the mask would need to reach temperatures over 1,500°C to radiate away $48 \text{ W/cm}^2$ of heat. Graphene and h-BN can technically survive such temperatures in a vacuum, but they become highly susceptible to "tearing" or structural failure.

The "Stochastic" Damage​

• Secondary Electron Scouring: The flux of secondary electrons (calculated at ~$\gamma \times \Phi$) will create a constant "micro-current" through the monolayer. Over time, this can lead to electron-stimulated desorption, where atoms are literally knocked out of the lattice, causing the nanoholes to "grow" or merge, destroying the pattern.

 

[U235]

I don't think the masks have to be a monolayer.

5+ nm thick SiN membranes from what I can see.

 

[user nl]

I don't think the masks have to be a monolayer.

5+ nm thick SiN membranes from what I can see.

I'm not a He-nanopore mask scattering expert but looking at some of their recent papers and discussing/calculating this with Gemini, I get the impression that stochastic blurring for 5 nm long channels is killing the resolution (2022 paper).

Therefore, some of the more recent simulations (2024 paper) were done with a monolayer (h-BN) and including (2025 paper) quantum interaction/scattering of the He atoms with the h-BN monolayer. That made me wonder about (monolayer) MASK heating effects.

Any feedback appreciated.



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https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6455/ac4b41/meta​

An atom passing through a hole in a dielectric membrane: impact of dispersion forces on mask-based matter-wave lithography​

Johannes Fiedler and Bodil Holst

Published 10 February 2022 • © 2022 IOP Publishing Ltd. All rights, including for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies, are reserved.
Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, Volume 55, Number 2
Citation Johannes Fiedler and Bodil Holst 2022 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 55 025401DOI 10.1088/1361-6455/ac4b41
Abstract
Fast, large area patterning of arbitrary structures down to the nanometre scale is of great interest for a range of applications including the semiconductor industry, quantum electronics, nanophotonics and others. It was recently proposed that nanometre-resolution mask lithography can be realised by sending metastable helium atoms through a binary holography mask consisting of a pattern of holes. However, these first calculations were done using a simple scalar wave approach, which did not consider the dispersion force interaction between the atoms and the mask material. To access the true potential of the idea, it is necessary to access how this interaction affects the atoms. Here we present a theoretical study of the dispersion force interaction between an atom and a dielectric membrane with a hole. We look at metastable and ground state helium, using experimentally realistic wavelengths (0.05–1 nm) and membrane thicknesses (5–50 nm). We find that the effective hole radius is reduced by around 1–7 nm for metastable helium and 0.5–3.5 nm for ground-state helium. As expected, the reduction is largest for thick membranes and slow atoms.

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https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2024/na/d4na00322e
Atomic diffraction by nanoholes in hexagonal boron nitride†
Eivind Kristen Osestad <span>ab</span>, Ekaterina Zossimova <span>cd</span>, Michael Walter <span>de</span>, Bodil Holst <span>ab</span> and Johannes Fiedler *<span>a</span>
<span>a</span>Department of Physics and Technology, University of Bergen, Allégaten 55, 5007 Bergen, Norway. E-mail: johannes.fiedler@uib.no
<span>b</span>Lace Lithography AS, Allégaten 55, 5007 Bergen, Norway
<span>c</span>Department of Physics and Astronomy, Living Systems Institute, University of Exeter, EX4 4QD, Exeter, UK
<span>d</span>Freiburg Center for Interactive Materials and Bioinspired Technologies (FIT), University of Freiburg, D-79110 Freiburg, Germany
<span>e</span>Institute of Physics, University of Freiburg, Hermann-Herder-Str. 3, 79104 Freiburg, Germany

Received 17th April 2024 , Accepted 21st August 2024
First published on 2nd September 2024


Fabricating patterned nanostructures with matter waves can help to realise new nanophotonic devices.
However, due to dispersion effects, designing patterns with nanoscale features is challenging. Here, we
consider the propagation of a helium matter wave through different holes in hexagonal boron nitride (h-
BN) as a case study for the weakest dispersion interaction and the matter wave's diffraction as it passes
through the holes. We use a quantum-mechanical model to calculate the polarisability of edge atoms
around the holes, where we observe polarisation ripples of enhanced and reduced polarisabilities around
the holes. We use these values to calculate van der Waals dispersion coefficients for the scattered
helium atoms. We find that the resulting diffraction patterns are affected by the shape and size of the
holes, where the smallest holes have a radius of just 6 Å. These results can be used to predict the
resolution limits of nano-hole patterns on nanophotonic materials.


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https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1209/0295-5075/adf994​

Atomic diffraction by patterned holes in hexagonal boron nitride: A comparison between semi-classical and quantum computational models​

E. K. Osestad, E. Zossimova, M. Walter and J. Fiedler

Published 2 September 2025 • Copyright © 2025 EPLA. All rights, including for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies, are reserved
Europhysics Letters, Volume 151, Number 5
Focus Issue on Casimir Effect and Its Role in Modern Physics
Citation E. K. Osestad et al 2025 EPL 151 55002DOI 10.1209/0295-5075/adf994

Abstract– The diffraction of atoms and molecules through tiny, sub-nanometre holes in atomically thin membranes is a promising approach for advancing atom interferometry sensing and atomic holography. However, dispersion interactions, such as the Casimir-Polder force, pose a significant challenge by attracting diffracting particles to the membrane, limiting the minimum hole size. This paper presents a numerical simulation of helium matter-wave diffraction through sub-nanometre holes in hexagonal boron nitride by solving the time-dependent Schr¨odinger equation. Our results show that the transmission rates in the quantum approach are significantly higher than those predicted by the commonly used semi-classical approach. This suggests that significantly smaller holes can be used in the design of diffractive masks, provided that fabrication techniques can meet the atomic-level precision to realise such holes. Furthermore, we observe notable differences in diffraction patterns, even for atom velocities that are much greater than the expected convergence threshold between semi-classical and quantum computational models.