Integrated Substrate and Thin-film Design Methods

A recently patented connectionist paradigm, called the hine hose of thin film growth and removal. Trained by exposure to cumulative experimental data, this paradigm may autonomously compute processing routes toward specifically targeted end goals. In the case of thin film growth and removal, the Creativity Machine may readily experiment with alternative processing routes, finally recommending all growth and/or etching paths that lead to desired stoichiometric and crystallographic film properties. Furthermore, it may design any thin film process within the constraints imposed by environmental compliance regulations.Until now, a significant difficulty in applying this technique to `real world' thin film growth/removal problems has been the sheer size of the data files normally encountered. Typically, thousands of data points, taken across multiple process parameters, must be converted to `neural newtwork digestible' form before the paradigm may be applied. Herein, we propose the development of a novel signal compression technique that will enable the Creativity Machine paradigm to solve difficult and complex materials processing problems. We then propose how this combined process compression and discovery technique may be appled to varied problems in thin film growth and removal.