20 years of Microprocesses and Nanotechinology Conference

Summary form only given. The Microprocesses and Nanotechnology Conference (MNC) celebrates 20th anniversary this year. This paper presents the history and prospect of the MNC with looking back many papers presented at the conference. The MNC was established in 1988 for a conference discussing lithography and other micro-fabrication technologies for semiconductor industries in Asia, like the 3-beams-conference, now electron, ion, and photon beam technology and nanofabrication (EIPBN), in the United States and the micro-and nano-engineering (MNE), in Europe at the time. Over the past 20 years, the conferences were held mainly in Japan including twice holding abroad, in 1994 Taiwan and in 1998 Korea. Consequently, papers from Asian countries besides Japan have been increasing steadily since 1998. This year, papers from Asian countries exceed 35% of the total papers. The conference name of MNC was changed from the former name of Micro Process Conference (MPC) in 1997, expecting the increasing prosperity of nanotechnologies. The conference, then, have been coverings nano fabrication, nano devices and materials, and their physics and applications, as well as equipments (tool technologies) using photons, electrons, ions, and other energetic particles. To extend application areas further, MEMS and micromachining have been added to its scope in 1997, and also biotechnology and so-called lab-on-a-chip were added in 2000. Imprint lithography also was added in 2003. In this way MNC has played a key role not only being a center of excellence specializing in lithography but also providing a forum discussing on cross-disciplinary areas. In the presentation we introduce several papers selected from those contributed over the past 20 years which showed outstanding quality in originality or foresight. They presented new concepts and significant advances together with the background of the research at the time. We also introduce papers which have made outstanding contributions to the introduction and growth of newly appearing the subjects. Some technologies have been faded out as time goes by, however the knowledge has lived on in succeeding generation. New things will be found by studying the old. The presentation material is exhibited in the MNC anniversary DVD booklet together with all abstracts for the 20 years of the conference series.