January 26, 2012 – BUSINESS WIRE — Semiconductor substrate maker Soitec joined SEMATECH’s Front End Processes (FEP) and Advanced Metrology Programs, bringing silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers and other advanced engineered wafers into the group to work on new processes and technologies enabling high-performance, low-power IC applications. The collaboration will also focus on applying SEMATECH’s metrology expertise towards extending current solutions to advanced transistor designs.
SOI wafers offer improved semiconductor device performance — faster switching, reduced power consumption, lower fab costs — over bulk silicon. Fully depleted SOI (FDSOI) presents advantages in variability control and cost reductions at the 28nm node and below. "We will work together to develop practical and promising high-mobility non-planar and metrology approaches to speed the transition of these new innovations to mainstream semiconductor production," said Raj Jammy, SEMATECH’s vice president of emerging technologies.
As a member of SEMATECH’s Metrology and FEP divisions, located at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) of the University at Albany, Soitec will collaborate with SEMATECH’s material and metrology experts and leverage SEMATECH’s activities in advanced metrology, materials, process technology, and device characterization to extend CMOS and high-mobility FinFET technologies. SEMATECH and Soitec plan to develop dimensional and films metrology on Soitec’s SOI wafers.
SEMATECH’s FEP program is exploring innovative materials, new transistor structures, and alternative non-volatile memories (NVM) to address key aspects of system-level performance, power, variability, and cost and to help accelerate innovation in the continued scaling of logic and memory applications.
SEMATECH’s Advanced Metrology program serves the measurement needs of high-volume semiconductor manufacturing, driven by joint development projects with tool suppliers and leading universities. The program identifies key gaps in measurement technology for advanced devices and develops solutions to meet the needs of the sub-20nm technology node and beyond.
Soitec manufactures semiconductor materials for energy and electronics applications. For more information, visit www.soitec.com.
SEMATECH is an international consortium of leading semiconductor device, equipment, and materials manufacturers. Information about SEMATECH can be found at www.sematech.org.