SEMATECH and Exogenesis Corp. have agreed to a strategic alliance to commercialize Exogenesis’ Accelerated Neutral Atom Beam (ANAB) technology and their nAcceltm accelerated particle beam equipment platform.
“The chip industry is in the era of atomic scale processing. The applications of ANAB being developed will enable better controlled and more efficient manufacturing and open up new functionality for semiconductor devices,” said Ron Goldblatt, Ph.D., SEMATECH CEO and President.
SEMATECH and Exogenesis will form a new company to bring ANAB technology to market for the semiconductor industry. Beyond the initial focus on integrated circuit manufacturing, the partners will explore ANAB applications in other nanoelectronics fields which may lead to the formation of additional companies.
ANAB technology is a unique, patented approach to modifying and controlling surfaces with atomic level control at a depth of a few nanometers.
“There is no other technology that offers the performance profile of ANAB” says Richard Svrluga, President and CEO of Exogenesis. Chemical modification, material removal and deposition, surface smoothing and control of surface morphology are all possible with the ANAB platform.
ANAB is already being used in the biomedical field for precise control of pharmacological and biointegration properties and to enable development of more safe and efficacious implantable medical devices. ANAB has been demonstrated to provide benefits to the surfaces of a wide range of materials including glass, metals, organic, semiconductor and polymeric materials.
“SEMATECH and Exogenesis have worked together since 2013 as part of SEMATECH’s programs to enable the semiconductor industry’s adoption of Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUVL)” said Ed Barth, Ph.D., SEMATECH Director of Corporate Development. “The partners have already demonstrated and published the value of ANAB technology for improving transparency of thin silicon membranes which was a significant performance enhancement for EUV pellicles,” said Barth.
Other work by Exogenesis and SEMATECH demonstrated that ANAB processing enabled a level of smoothing of EUV mask substrates to a quality better than conventional methods, improving the optical properties of the mask blanks created with them. These results were published in 2014.
Ongoing development work will occur both at Exogenesis facilities and at the NanoTech Complex of SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (SUNY Poly CNSE) in Albany, NY. This will allow the strategic alliance to leverage SUNY Poly CNSE’s state-of-the-art resources and the NanoTech Complex’s globally recognized capabilities to rapidly bring new innovations to market which improve the quality, reliability and performance of advanced nanoelectronics.