July 12, 2006 – ASM America Inc., a subsidiary of ASM International N.V. and CEA-Leti have engaged in a joint development research program for the advancement of new front end of line CMOS process technology for nodes at 45nm and below.

The program aims to develop sub-45nm epitaxy and epitaxy pre-clean technologies with the goal of finding alternative processing schemes to obtain improved transistor performance. The project’s main objectives are to facilitate development of new advanced transistor and substrate architectures, CMOS technologies and processes involving advanced low temperature epitaxy and epitaxy pre-clean technologies.

The companies aim to develop selective and blanket strained silicon processes for recessed and elevated source drain applications and use of SiGe and Ge films to design advanced CMOS channels and substrate schemes. The first phase of research will be conducted on ASM’s 200 mm Epsilon tool, migrating to the advanced Epsilon 300 mm tool in later phases. Work will be conducted at CEA-Leti MINATEC research facilities in Grenoble, France.