An NSF DMREF award will help Whitney Loo design polymers critical to making next-gen computer chips

Whitney Loo, the Conway Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is part of a four-year project selected by the National Science Foundation Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) program.

Loo serves as Principal Investigator, leading the research with collaborators Alexa Kuenstler, Antonia Statt, Simon Rogers and Damien Guironnet at the University of Illinois and Jeffrey Ethier from the Air Force Research Lab. The team will use the four years of funding for a project called “AI-Informed, Closed-Loop Design of Negative Photoresists for High-Volume EUV Lithography” to develop photoresists compatible with new extreme ultraviolet (EUV)-based lithography methods used in the production of computer chips.

Photolithography is a key element in chip manufacturing in which the intricate patterns of electronics are transferred onto silicon wafers using light. Crucial to this process are photoresists, sensitive materials that create these patterns when exposed to light. EUV lithography, the latest technology used by US-based manufacturers, has the potential to enable more powerful chips by packing higher volumes of small electronic components onto a single chip. 

Finding photoresists that can work with this process and pattern these extremely tiny features is essential to the success of this technology. Loo and her colleagues will investigate the local molecular structure of polymer-based photoresists to understand how patterning works on the nanoscale level and how this translates to manufacturing outcomes. They will then use elements of chemistry, processing, characterization and computation to design new polymer-based photoresists that can enable this cutting-edge lithography.

The project is one of 25 DMREF projects awarded in 2025 to 104 researchers at 44 universities across 25 states. The goal of DMREF is to get materials to market faster and cheaper than what is possible through traditional research methods. This involves seamless partnerships within the DMREF teams and across four directorates at NSF. The translation of fundamental research toward manufacturing and application is facilitated through valuable partnerships with a variety of federal research programs and international partners.

DMREF teams couple theory, data science and artificial intelligence with advanced synthetic and characterization techniques to discover materials and optimize their properties for the next generation of applications including semiconductors, quantum devices, wireless technology, biotechnology, energy efficiency and resilient structural materials.