Nealey Group

Paulina Rincon-Delgadillo

  • Research Engineer at IMEC, Belgium

  • Contact:
    773.702.3181

Paulina obtained her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Western Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESO, Guadalajara, Mexico). She then worked in Mexico for five years before moving to the United States to pursue a PhD. From 2003 to 2005, she worked at SIG Beverage Services Mexico as an account manager (technical sales for the beverage industry). In 2005, she joined Hilasal Mexicana, a textile company, as a development engineer. Her responsibilities included formulation and process design and testing of new products in the development laboratory and dyeing and finishing areas. Finally, before starting her graduate studies, Paulina worked in Professor Paul Nealey’s group to obtain experience in a research environment.

In the fall of 2009, Paulina joined the chemical engineering graduate program at University of Wisconsin-Madison. After two years, she moved to Leuven, Belgium, as part of collaboration between the Nealey group and IMEC. During this time, she obtained a master’s degree from University of Wisconsin and became a graduate student of the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. During her time in Belgium, she also got a graduate degree in electrical engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

Paulina got her PhD from the Institute for Molecular Engineering (now the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering) in June 2014 and became the first-ever engineering graduate from the University of Chicago. After graduation, she returned to Belgium and joined IMEC as a research engineer.

Paulina’s research is focused on identifying the primary parameters that impact defectivity in a chemo-epitaxy flow for directed self-assembly (DSA) of block copolymers (BCP) and to identify whether there is a fundamental lower limit for defectivity in DSA. In order to do that, she started an internship at IMEC (Belgium), where the first step of her work was the implementation of the flow on a 300mm wafer process in a clean room environment. Since then, she has studied the impact of materials and processing conditions on DSA. At the same time, defectivity of the thus obtained processes has been determined.

The implemented flow allows the fine-tuning of the process conditions and provides chemically nano-patterned substrates with well-defined geometry and chemistry. Using a BCP with natural periodicity of 28nm assembled on 84nm pitch pre-patterns, high degrees of perfection are achieved across the 300mm samples while obtaining 3X frequency multiplication. Using this setup, Paulina’s work includes the analysis of the effect of the boundary conditions in the formation of defects related to the chemical patterns (chemistry and geometry) and the BCP (annealing conditions and film thickness effects).

Studying the effects of chemistry and geometry on DSA hole-shrink process in three-dimensions

Zhou, Chun, et al. "Studying the effects of chemistry and geometry on DSA hole-shrink process in three-dimensions." Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS 17.3 (2018): 031203.

Design of surface patterns with optimized thermodynamic driving forces for the directed self-assembly of block copolymers in lithographic applications

Garner, Grant P., et al. "Design of surface patterns with optimized thermodynamic driving forces for the directed self-assembly of block copolymers in lithographic applications." Molecular Systems Design & Engineering 2.5 (2017): 567-580.

Characterization of the shape and line-edge roughness of polymer gratings with grazing incidence small-angle X-ray scattering and atomic force microscopy

Suh, Hyo Seon, et al. "Characterization of the shape and line-edge roughness of polymer gratings with grazing incidence small-angle X-ray scattering and atomic force microscopy." Journal of Applied Crystallography 49.3 (2016): 823-834.

Characterization of the shape and line-edge roughness of polymer gratings with grazing incidence sma

H. S. Suh, X. Chen, P. A. Rincon-Delgadillo, Z. Jiang, J. Strzalka, J. Wang, W. Chen, R. Gronheid, J. J. de Pablo, N. Ferrier, M. Doxastakis and P. F. Nealey. Characterization of the shape and line-edge roughness of polymer gratings with grazing incidence sma. Journal of Applied Crystallography. 2016. Vol. 49, Pg. 823-834.

Three-Tone Chemical Patterns for Block Copolymer Directed Self Assembly

Williamson, LD; Seidel, RN; Chen, XX; Suh, HS; Delgadillo, PR; Gronheid, R; Nealey, PF. Three-Tone Chemical Patterns for Block Copolymer Directed Self Assembly. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. 2016. Vol. 8, Pg. 2704-2712.

Molecular pathways for defect annihilation in directed self-assembly

Hur, SM; Thapar, V; Ramirez-Hernandez, A; Khaira, G; Segal-Peretz, T; Rincon-Delgadillo, PA; Li, WH; Muller, M; Nealey, PF; de Pablo, JJ. Molecular pathways for defect annihilation in directed self-assembly. PNAS. 2015. Vol. 112, Pg. 14144–14149.

Molecular pathways for defect annihilation in directed self-assembly

Hur, Su-Mi, et al. "Molecular pathways for defect annihilation in directed self-assembly." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.46 (2015): 14144-14149.

The effects of geometry and chemistry of nanopatterned substrates on the directed self-assembly of block-copolymer melts

Garner, Grant, et al. "The effects of geometry and chemistry of nanopatterned substrates on the directed self-assembly of block-copolymer melts." Alternative Lithographic Technologies VII. Vol. 9423. International Society for Optics and Photonics, 2015.

Grazing-incidence small angle x-ray scattering studies of nanoscale polymer gratings

Doxastakis, Manolis, et al. "Grazing-incidence small angle x-ray scattering studies of nanoscale polymer gratings." Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography XXIX. Vol. 9424. International Society for Optics and Photonics, 2015.

High throughput grating qualification of directed self-assembly patterns using optical metrology

Van Look, L.; Delgadillo, P.R.; Lee, Y.T.; Pollentier, I.; Gronheid, R.; Cao, Y.; Lin, G.Y.; Nealey, P.F.. High throughput grating qualification of directed self-assembly patterns using optical metrology. Microelectronic Engieering. 2014. Vol. 123, Pg. 175-179.

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