Bilthoven, The Netherlands–ASM America has entered into an exclusive agreement with Innovations for High Performance (IHP) Microelectronics, a German development center for semiconductor technology, to commercialize silicon germanium carbon (SiGe:C)epitaxy technology, a process initially developed by IHP.

The process allows extremely high-speed SiGe:C heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) to be integrated into standard and advanced CMOS chips. The resulting BiCMOS chip is capable of operating at significantly higher frequencies and will serve the rapidly expanding need for increased bandwidth in telecommunication applications, according to ASM and IHP.

“Based on this exclusive agreement, IHP and ASM can now provide a turn-key solution for introducing SiGe:C into our customers’ SiGe semiconductor chip designs,” says ASM Epitaxial Business Unit Manager Dr. Armand P. Ferro. “The process and production capabilities of the Epsilon, ASM’s epitaxial tool, permit ready inclusion of SiGe:C processes into a wide variety of device designs, most notably HBT devices for high-speed communication applications. IHP recently put this SiGe:C technology into CMOS production at a major mobile communications and logic company. In addition, IHP has developed and can make available a complete suite of device design modules for integration with a variety of existing process designs.”