Dr. Trefonas is a DuPont Fellow in DuPont, where he works within the Electronics & Imaging business group. His research career began at Monsanto Electronics Materials Company, and then to co-founding a start-up company called Aspect Systems Inc. which acquired lithographic chemicals technology spun off from Monsanto. He continued in electronic materials R&D as his career moved via acquisitions by Shipley Company, Rohm and Haas Company, to The Dow Chemical Company, and then to DuPont following their merger. Prior to graduate school, Pete was also the creator of several commercial computer games which were popular on early microcomputer platforms.
Dr. Trefonas made major contributions to the development of many successful Dow products which are used in the production of integrated circuits spanning multiple device design generations from 2 micron to 16 nm node technologies. These include photoresists, antireflectant coatings, underlayers, developers, ancillary products, and environmentally safer ‘green’ products. These products have been used in the manufacture of many generations of electronic items.
The subjects of Pete’s scientific publications include photopolymer and photoresist chemistry, block copolymers and self-assembly, nanoparticle based displays, organic antireflectants, lithographic fundamental mechanisms, organosilicon polymers, and a variety of other topics within the field of materials science. He is an inventor on 105 granted US patents, and is an author of over 121 journal and technical publications, and has given many plenary, keynote and invited presentations at conferences in the last few years. Peter was recently awarded the 2016 Perkin Medal for outstanding contributions to industrial chemistry, the 2014 ACS Heroes of Chemistry Award and the 2014 SPIE Willson Award, was named a Fellow of The International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) in 2018, and elected into the National Academy of Engineering in 2018.
Pete earned his PhD in Inorganic Chemistry with Prof. Robert West at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985, and his BS in Chemistry at the University of New Orleans in 1980. Originally a native of New Orleans, Dr. Trefonas has lived in Medway, Massachusetts for the last 30 years.