Dear colleagues,

Welcome to the 63rd International Conference on Electron, Ion, Photon Beam Technology and Nanofabrication and welcome to Minneapolis. Your continued support and dedication to “3-Beams” makes this the premier conference for open exchange of leading-edge nanoscale lithography and nanofabrication research. We have three outstanding plenary speakers, a range of exceptional invited presentations, and an exciting array of contributed papers. Without a doubt, the EIPBN community keeps nanofabrication research vibrant worldwide and remains at the forefront of a wide array of novel applications.

I would like to extend my deepest appreciation to Regina Luttge, this year’s Program Chair, for putting together an exciting and diverse program that showcases the wide range of science research and applications covered by the ever-growing scope of EIPBN. This year’s theme, From Nature To Nanoscale Technology in Answering Humanity’s Pressing Challenges, focuses the program on the important questions and technological problems of our time. I hope you will explore as much of the program as you can, from our plenary speakers to the full slate of posters. I would like to thank Stefano Cabrini and Weilin Chao for putting together another great set of topics and speakers for our very popular short courses on Tuesday. And thanks to Martha Sanchez who has organized this year’s Women in Nanofabrication (WIN) luncheon, which has consistently been the event with the most interesting discussion topics and thought-provoking topics. Thanks to James Spallas for heading our mentor session and, financial trustee John Randall for all his help and, of course, the ever-entertaining micrograph contest. This year we will continue a new tradition for Three Beams, getting out to do some service in the community so that we can hopefully leave the Minneapolis community a little better than when we arrived. Special thanks to Larry and Shelly Muray for organizing this outreach.

Thanks to Nicki Davis for her at-the-ready help keeping the website up-to-date at a moment’s notice and Nichole Ballard and everyone at YESEvents for making sure our registration process is smooth and easy.

Three Beams just wouldn’t work without the peerless help every step of the way from Melissa Widerkehr and her team at Widerkehr and Associates. Melissa is a part of the EIPBN family and crucial to pulling off the meeting, details big and small. Our commercial session and sponsor activity is on the grow, thanks to the tireless work of Gerald Lopez, with help from Roger McCay and Guy DeRose. Under Gerald’s direction, we continue to expand our involvement from our sponsors, with a showcase and industrial session. Be sure to engage with all our sponsors, including old friends of the conference and new faces excited to interact with the community. Thanks to our sponsors whose generous support of EIPBN year after year help to make the conference what it is. Special thanks to our Platinum sponsor STS-Elionix, our silver sponsors GenISys and KLA and our other exhibitors and sponsors, Heidelberg Instruments, JEOL USA, NuFlare Technology, Raith America, Allresist, Amuneal Manufacturing, Cornell University, Crestec, DisChem, Eurofins EAG, Film Sense, Himax IGI Precision, Intel, Kurt J. Lesker Company, LatticeGear, Nanoscribe, SAES Group, Trion Technology, UC Components, Vistec Electron Beam, Wafer World, Zyvex Labs.

Finally, thanks to the EIPBN Steering and Advisory Committee for their continued support and dedication to the conference and the community. It’s the people that make Three Beams what it is, and I truly appreciate everyone who dedicates time and effort into making it happen year after year.

Enjoy the conference and enjoy Minneapolis,

Aaron Stein,

Center for Functional Nanomaterials Brookhaven National Laboratory EIPBN Conference Chair 2019.

Dear delegates and friends of EIPBN,

First of all: I fully undersign Aaron’s letter of welcome! We have been getting positively connected at the interface of so many facets of organizing this conference. This year, Aaron and I were forming the top team, but not without having had the possibility to stand on the shoulders of giants. The many conference and program chairs who managed and organized this prime conference on the advances in Electron, Ion and Photon Beam Technology and Nanofabrication (EIPBN) before us are as important for the success of EIPBN2019 as much as the efforts we put together as the currently acting steering committee.

In addition: Thank you, Aaron, for finding the Hyatt at Minneapolis being for us the ideal place to get going in organizing yet another EIPBN. The budget has been kept at your best and costs are put on a balance against quality in a way by you that makes me confident that the conference will keep striving in the future. After so many highly successful and exciting EIPBN conferences, we are EIPBNers – a true community, worthwhile sustaining. This also includes our relatively new conference features hosting WIN, Mentoring and Outreach activities we all put as much effort into as into the technical program and the short courses. EIPBN aims for specialized and soft-skill training of the young scientists amongst us as much as broadening awareness of senior scientists, leaders and professionals, for our role in society and disseminating excellent research results.

The shoes of the many previous program chairs were put in front of me in the trust that I can make them fit my feet somehow. I learned a lot from all the interactions that I had with all of you plus our supporting team including Rich (softcon), Nicki (website & apps) and Melissa (conference office) - to name just a few. Of course, members of the steering and advisory committee were always there to lend a hand, engage and test ideas for continuous improvement in planning the upcoming event. Not just this year but throughout the many years before visiting the conference as a presenter, I received tremendous support from all of you, our delegates! Today, as Program Chair of EIPBN 2019, I completed the final changes on the technical program and assigned thanks to all your help and suggestions co/session chairs to the 30 sessions in which we are going to share with you invited and contributed papers as oral talks from members of our valued community at this year’s EIPBN addressing their research highlights and engineering advances in instruments, processes and characterization methods as well as applications taking the benefits of the micro- and nanoscale into account. These sessions are accompanied by 70+ invited and contributed presentations that we share with you in our poster sessions and which will facilitate a vibrant interaction with our commercial exhibitors and sponsors. We were not able to run the conference without you! All this will happen after having the opportunity to listen to 3 wonderful esteemed plenary speakers: Olga, Karen and Markus. I am highly indebted to them and all of you for agreeing to share your knowledge and vision with us at EIPBN2019.

Now, my list of names and spreadsheet scribbles are in the trusted hands of Melissa to be put into our familiar EIPBN program booklet. Thanks for being always stand-by, Melissa!

EIPBN has become my scientific-technical home, my beacon on my path of finding answers to questions of developing fabrication methods at the very small length scale for problems life presents us with. Applying our micro- and nanotechnologies to brain research in vitro has become my research passion through-out the last 10 years specifically with a focus on interrogating and characterizing living matter (neurons and their networks) by artificial nanoscale interactions. My own research group and team at Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, is just starting up and could not grow without all your inputs and our many fruitful interactions that I experienced when visiting EIPBN conference over the years. I collected many happy memories with all of you: there are many scientist fellows who join regularly and persistently for decades, I highly appreciate that many of you will also be with us this year. Let’s create more happy memories!

Wishing you all a wonderful exchange at the conference and beyond! Best wishes and safe travels,

Dr Regina Luttge

Associate professor and Chair of Neuro-Nanoscale Engineering, Mechanical Engineering Department/Microsystems section Eindhoven University of Technology

Program Chair EIPBN 2019