Entegris, Inc. and SEMATECH announced they have partnered to move forward the development of advanced nanoscale particle removal processes and cleaning technologies for next-generation wafers and devices.
This collaboration will address some of the profound changes taking place in the semiconductor industry that are impacting fundamental aspects of process and equipment design—such as integration of new materials and process technology for sub-20nm node manufacturing, next-generation lithography requirements and the progression to 450mm wafers. One key issue relates to the preparation of critical surfaces through the entire semiconductor manufacturing process. Entegris will work with experts from SEMATECH’s Nanodefect Center to develop new technologies and solutions to reduce nano-scale particle contamination during wafer processing.
“We are pleased to partner with SEMATECH to provide early solutions for wafer surface cleaning,” said Bertrand Loy, president and CEO of Entegris. “Our goal is to leverage our contamination control expertise to develop filtration and particle detection methods for the most advanced cleaning processes.”
“SEMATECH’s Nanodefect Center aims to build industry participation in detecting, modeling, characterizing, and providing solutions for defect issues as geometries shrink below the 10nm node,” said Michael Lercel, senior director of Nanodefectivity and Metrology. “Our partnership with Entegris brings additional expertise to SEMATECH, and in turn will raise the level of our research efforts and further strengthen SEMATECH’s commitment in identifying the challenges of future technology nodes.”
Built on more than a decade of technical expertise in surface cleaning, particle removal and cleaning technology development, SEMATECH’s Nanodefect Center provides a suite of metrology and analysis capabilities to investigate the generation, propagation, removal, and impact of defects generated by equipment, equipment components, and materials used in advanced semiconductor processes such as lithography, etch, CMP, deposition, and cleaning.