January 21, 2004 – MEMC Electronic Materials, St. Peters, MO, has agreed to license strained silicon technology from European consortium IMEC, and bonded-SOI wafer transfer technology from Silicon Genesis Corp.

MEMC and IMEC will collaborate on development of strained-silicon for scaled planar MOS devices. MEMC will produce strained-silicon bulk wafers using IMEC’s thin strain relaxed buffer technology, with engineering samples ready by May 2004. The company also is joining IMEC’s Industrial Affiliation Program, which is working on implementation of high-mobility layers and source/drain engineering solutions in scaled planar devices.

MEMC also has signed a deal to license bonded SOI wafer transfer technology from Silicon Genesis Corp. (SiGen), San Jose, CA. The deal includes recipes for SiGen’s NanoTech process as well as the purchase of proprietary later-transfer tools. Initial production of bonded SOI and strained-SOI wafers at MEMC’s facilities in St. Peter will be ready for customer sampling by May 2004.