September 9, 2003 – Schlumberger Technologies, Inc. has transferred its verification systems unit, which develops metrology capital equipment, to Soluris, Concord, MA, a new company formed by the division’s management team. The deal includes the company’s Yosemite CD-SEM and IVS 135 CD and Overlay systems.
The transaction focuses Soluris on the SD-SEM metrology market, while allowing Schlumberger to “divest non-core activities,” according to executive VP Irwin Pfister.
September 9, 2003 – Applied Materials, Santa Clara, CA, has unveiled a new tool for 65nm-generation mask metrology, adding to its line of pattern generation, etch, and inspection tools.
Based on the company’s NanoSEM 3D platform, the RETicleSEM offers 2.8nm resolution with support for various materials and mask technologies. AMAT says it several RETicleSEM systems have already been shipped to customers.
September 5, 2003 – Nanometrics, Milpitas, CA, has introduced a pair of integrated metrology tools combining optical critical dimension spectroscopic ellipsometry with deep UV spectroscopic reflectometry.
The NanoOCD/DUV 9010 incorporates ultraviolet optical critical dimension (OCD) spectroscopic ellipsometry and deep ultraviolet spectroscopic reflectrometry to measure thin-film and film stack thickness on pads, as well as oxide, nitride, and trench profile measurements on single-tool arrays. The company claims the tool achieves throughput of greater than 200 wafer/hour, and meets all metrology requirements for dielectric CMP processes as well as SEMI interface standards.
Nanometrics also says that it has added OCD metrology capabilities to its 9300 line of advanced metrology systems, to eliminate the need for measuring film properties on separate tools. The company claims the dual-function tool achieves throughput of greater than 150 wafer/hour. Initial shipments of the 9300 system are scheduled for 3Q03.
 |
Aug. 22, 2003 – The MEMS industry has seen mixed success over the last decade. Today, there are only a few high-volume MEMS products available, notably air bag accelerometers, desktop inkjet print heads and pressure sensors for automotive and biomedical applications.
 |
 |
Despite a major infusion of funds in other applications, such as optotelecommunications, RF (radio frequency, or wireless), and biomedical/microfluidics, these efforts have not yet produced working MEMS in high volumes.
The customer-foundry relationship is a significant factor. The “foundry” must be more than just a foundry; it must be a true manufacturing partner.
There is clearly a continuum of customer needs when they engage with a foundry. Some customers are more expert in MEMS than others. In some cases, the foundry acts as a true “foundry,” receiving wafers from the customer, performing specifically predefined process steps and returning the wafers to the customer. Other customers bring a design to the foundry with the expectation that the foundry will design the process flow for them. Regardless of design sophistication, this scenario requires some level of feedback on the design itself to ensure manufacturability. In many cases, this feedback is substantial and critical to the customer’s — and foundry’s — success.
Still other customers provide only specifications, such as speed, size, power consumption or, in the case of microfluidics, metered volume delivery. Here, the “foundry” must provide complete design services, working closely with the customers to ensure that their designs meet specifications. In all cases, the foundry must also provide prototyping, process development and manufacturing services.
Simply put, you can’t make a car in a toaster factory. While both are made primarily of metal, the car requires much more sophisticated manufacturing capability.
Varied materials, processes and tolerances are required to make very complex MEMS work. Pure CMOS fabs are extremely limited in the materials that can be used due to contamination issues. For complex MEMS, flexibility is needed to incorporate non-CMOS materials.
Novel processes are also required for many complex MEMS. The key to success is adaptability to the customer’s requirements and specifications. And the foundry must be able to invent outside fixed design rules, for example, to produce smooth mirrors on vertical etched surfaces or to actuate devices during wafer processing to avoid subsequent damage to the device.
Finally, successful manufacturing of complex MEMS requires superior tools and metrology; for example, submicron photolithography and metrology. Most MEMS work is done on contact lithography tools, but many devices require or can benefit from a reduction stepper’s finer lateral dimensions and superior dimensional control.
Even where the features do not require submicron lithography, the tighter dimensional control of the stepper can provide devices that work better and more reliably. Other required tools provide precision deposition and metrology to ensure tight tolerances for thickness, composition and morphology.
The MEMS adage, “You can make one of anything” rings true. Products designed with manufacturability in mind have a vastly superior opportunity for success. The design must be conceived with the requirement that it meet well-thought-out tolerances that are achievable in quantity production.
Extensive 1-D modeling is essential to designing for manufacturability. If the foundry does not offer these services, the design may often not meet the specific requirements and capabilities of the fab.
The importance of manufacturing controls to high-volume production cannot be over-emphasized. These include metrology and test for process optimization and implementation of statistical quality and process control.
Once the product is being prototyped and/or manufactured in a given foundry, moving that product to a different facility is painful and costly. Reasons for breaking up this marriage can range from the fact that the selected foundry partner has limited manufacturing capacity or expertise, or that a redesign is required after several iterations have not reached the required yield.
This problem can only be solved by selecting a full-service foundry/manufacturing partner. The foundry must offer full services, with the required capabilities, facilities, tools, experience and high-volume manufacturing capacity in one place, specifically:
• Flexibility for difficult customer requirements;
• High-volume manufacturing experience;
• Submicron photolithography for tight dimensional and overlay control;
• Large fab capacity with an automated and complete tool set;
• Non-CMOS materials flexibility;
• Extensive metrology and test capability, including the tools and the experience to optimize and control the production process.
August 18, 2003 – FASL Japan Ltd., the Japanese arm of a joint venture between AMD and Fujitsu, and GE Global Electronic Solutions have completed a $100 million sale and leaseback of equipment from one of FASL’s fabs. The deal involves 143 pieces of equipment ranging from lithography to metrology, deposition and tech, and furnace equipment.
 |
Aug. 15, 2003 – Sensitive electrical measurements provide the underpinning for many nanotechnology discoveries, particularly in the areas of materials and nanoelectronics. They help academic and industrial scientists and engineers fully understand the electrical properties of new materials, and the electrical performance of new nanoelectronic devices and components.
That knowledge is imperative if the science and business communities hope to unravel the complexities of matter at the nanoscale and make reliable electronic devices based on nanomaterials.
 |
For nanotechnology to progress, though, nano-technologists will need instrument suppliers to develop new techniques and equipment to support their cutting-edge research. Instrument designers, in turn, will benefit from researchers who can share insights into critical measurement problems.
For instance, nanomaterials can exhibit high levels of conductivity and nanoelectronic devices often operate at low levels of current. Consequently, the instruments used to measure these phenomena must be much more sensitive and precise. The measurement techniques and instruments also must minimize noise and other sources of error that interfere with the signal.
Historically, many scientific advances occur only after suitable investigative instruments become available. Today, tools such as the atomic force microscope and the scanning electron microscope help nanotech researchers visualize, resolve, and perform surface
characterization of nanoscale objects. The information obtained with these tools allows researchers to manipulate atoms and molecules to create new materials and structures. However, tools are needed to measure phenomena going on beneath the surfaces of nanomaterials.
The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) is aware of the importance of these tools. In 2000, when President Clinton announced the formation of the NNI, a committee charged with outlining its goals recommended creating programs for the invention and development of new instruments for nanoscience. In 2002, the NNI included in its grand challenges a call for more sophisticated and standardized nanoscale instrumentation and metrology designed to provide higher performance and measurement efficiency at lower cost. It outlined instruments and tools for measurement, manipulation and analysis that will not only support current activity, but also take nanotechnology to the next level.
Some companies, government laboratories and universities are heeding this call by developing nanomanipulation systems, nanoassemblers and nanoprobes to advance the science. To be most effective, these new research tools and instruments must be easy to use and cost-effective. The importance of ease and cost will grow as industry employment grows.
Some of the present tools are very complex. There are just too many buttons to push. Data transfer mechanisms are tedious and can require extensive amounts of storage media. Graphical analysis takes too long. Programming steals time away from research. Department heads and managers who decide about equipment investments should examine these issues carefully, and compare instrument features before committing funds.
To advance the state of the art rapidly, researchers can’t be bogged down with programming chores and arcane details of instrument operation. User-friendly instruments are important, not only to researchers and technicians, but also to design engineers and manufacturing specialists who must take new discoveries and convert them into practical products. To meet this challenge, state-of-the-art electrical characterization systems must now be PC-based with the point-and-click, cut-and-paste, and drag-and-drop features of the Windows operating system. These system features make test setup, execution, and analysis more time efficient by shortening the learning curve.
However, meeting the grand challenge of sensitive, user-friendly measurements must be a cooperative effort between instrumentation suppliers and user organizations. Researchers need to communicate their electrical measurement needs fully to instrumentation suppliers, and provide some insight into possible future needs. In light of users’ scarce financial resources, instrumentation suppliers must not overlook the need for affordable designs. They must continue to innovate to support both emerging measurement needs and nanotechnology investment limitations.
By working with instrument suppliers, researchers in different disciplines can provide specialized knowledge of electrical measurement problems that are core issues in the development of novel materials and electrical components. By working with this new generation of nanotech researchers and technicians, suppliers of sensitive electrical measurement systems can apply multidisciplined knowledge and skills to create effective, economical designs.
Partnerships between research organizations and instrument manufacturers help speed up development of measurement solutions — solutions that allow individual researchers to innovate, create and accelerate the future of nanoscience. The number of new discoveries resulting from such cooperation in the past attests to the value of these partnerships.
August 5, 2003 – Camtek, Migdal Haemek, Israel, a developer of optical inspection systems, has unveiled its Falcon system for inspecting wafers in the final manufacturing stages. The tool, which offers surface inspection and 3D metrology for wafers up to 300mm, is aimed at wafer-level in-line inspection processes at end-of-line, bumping, and packaging facilities. Camtek says it will install the first Falcon systems by the end of 2003.
 |
Aug. 5, 2003 – Gerd Binnig still recalls what it felt like in 1981 when he tested his technical innovations and saw atomic structures for the first time.
“It was like a dream to discover all this,” said Binnig, a fellow at IBM Zurich Research Laboratory who shared a Nobel Prize in physics for designing the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and helped create the atomic force microscope (ATM). “It was like being for the first time on the moon.”
 |
There now are about 300 companies globally developing instruments for nanoscale imaging, manipulation and manufacturing, including nanofabrication equipment and scanning probe microscopes — the term for STMs, AFMs and their variants.
It may not be a huge market, but tools are among nanotech’s first moneymakers. And the growing number of federal labs, academic research facilities and companies that rely on microscopy and other techniques — plus the standard industries that see uses for precision tools — may explain the rise of toolmakers and new products. Another driver is government funding. Billions globally go toward nano-related research and development, with a major share devoted to instrumentation and equipment.
The bustle also is beneficial for customers, who get less-expensive and easier-to-operate tools. But increasing competition and the rapidly changing technical and economic landscape make it difficult to predict which of today’s most promising firms and technologies will make it to market — much less remain there. It’s a challenge the toolmakers are trying to meet in myriad ways, including acquiring or partnering with other companies, and “piggy backing” innovations onto proven products while the real breakthroughs bubble up from the lab.
One of the most active hives is the scanning probe microscope (SPM) market, where more than 20 suppliers sell machines for characterizing at the nanoscale. Many small startups seek to differentiate themselves in price, performance or function from established players — and vice versa.
“It’s a dynamic marketplace,” said Paul West, vice president of products and chief technical officer of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Pacific Nanotechnology Inc. (PNI), one of the startups. “If you looked at the competitive landscape 15 years ago, it was 20 different companies.”
PNI, which began as Pacific Scanning in 1998, adopted the new name and expanded its business in 2001. That year, it acquired a company that had been making AFMs, a more versatile, three-dimensional atomic-scale measuring tool than the STM.
Officials say they have been shipping the Nano-R general purpose AFM since the first quarter of 2002. Earlier this year, PNI announced the launch of the Nano-I for the imaging of MEMS devices, magnetic read-write heads and other devices. The company declined to reveal sales, but said they have increased with each quarter since AFM shipments began.
CEO Gary Aden said PNI aims to make microscopes that are affordable, high-performance and easy-to-use — not to mention competitive. “We use modern manufacturing techniques,” Aden said. “Common components have allowed us to lower our costs and allow the performance to be really high.”
PNI this year also released a sensory feedback mechanism for its AFMs, allowing users to “feel” nanoscale features as they are manipulated in real time. The company formed a marketing alliance with the Switzerland-based NanoFeel, which develops the force-feedback tool.
Chapel Hill, N.C.-based 3rd Tech commercially launched its force-feedback tool, the NanoManipulator, in 2001. The first-of-its kind system was developed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the latest version has been integrated into a scanning probe microscope (SPM) and software developed by Spain’s Nanotec Electronica.
Ken Babcock, vice president and general manager of Veeco Instruments Inc.‘s Research Products business unit, said his eyes opened to the potential of nanoscience in 2001 when he attended a talk by Neal Lane, assistant for science and technology to former President Clinton and one of the brains behind the National Nanotechnology Initiative.
“It was the first time we realized this is serious — the government is going to dump an extra $1 billion a year into nanoscale research,” Babcock said. “Suddenly, in a meaningful way, more government funding was going to nanoscale science and technology. The cross-disciplinary promise of it … was real, not hype. Truly respected people were talking about all the exciting things going on.”
Veeco had been in the SPM business for several years, primarily for measurement applications in semiconductor and data storage industries. While it continued in those areas, the Woodbury, N.Y.-based publicly traded firm started to move its R&D toward nanoscale instruments. It also boosted collaborations with researchers, and Babcock said nanoscience now is one of the fastest growing segments for his business unit.
Veeco also bought the AFM divisions or AFM-related intellectual property from Digital Instruments in 1998, IBM in 2000 and ThermoMicroscopes in 2001. In June, Veeco announced it bought the AFM probe business of Santa Barbara, Calif.-based NanoDevices Inc. The two firms worked together since NanoDevices’ founding in 1998.
Veeco and FEI Co. earlier this year scuttled a planned merger, citing poor economic timing. Veeco planned to buy the Hillsboro, Ore.-based maker of metrology and process control equipment in a stock exchange worth close to $1 billion at the time of the announcement last year. The acquisition would have created the sixth largest semiconductor equipment maker and third largest metrology equipment firm in the United States.
The push into nanoscale tools has led to several products, including the Scentris Cantilever Sensor Research Tool for measurements in gas or liquid environments; the EnviroScope AFM for observing sample reactions to a variety of complex environmental changes; and the MultiMode PicoForce System for tactile interpretation of molecules and force interactions.
Chicago-based NanoInk Inc. works in what’s called Dip-Pen Nanolithography (DPN), a fabrication process for building patterns, layers and structures with nearly any molecule at resolutions fewer than 15 nanometers. DPN, originally developed as a method to directly write molecules onto a surface with an AFM, is based on technology developed by Chad Mirkin and his group at Northwestern University.
“There’s a lot of value out of AFM — I don’t mean to minimize that. But AFM technology, although only 10 to 12 years in the marketplace, it’s ready to go to the next step,” said Ray Eby, NanoInk’s vice president of product development. “We want to take it beyond an imaging tool.”
Before making its first hardware tool — the Nscriptor DPN Writer system, which launched in April — NanoInk licensed its DPN System 1 software to Veeco. It’s a package that introduces AFM users to DPN in a reasonably controlled way, Eby said.
The U.K.-based startup NanoSight is developing a laser-based optical element that can be attached to a conventional optical microscope that will allow users to visualize nanoparticles normally detectable only by electron microscope. Officials call it “the 50-by-50 advantage” — increase resolution by 50 times, 50 times cheaper than a scanning electron microscope.
The firm licensed its patented technology to U.K.-based Smiths Detection to develop biohazard detection devices, while NanoSight retains rights for quality control in manufacturing nanomaterials, virus detection and other uses. Tim Harper, a nonexecutive director of NanoSight as well as chief executive of the nanotech business research firm Cientifica Ltd., said any approach that makes nanoscale work easier is worth pursuing.
“Measuring things at the nanoscale is a hell of a job — trying to achieve repeatability, reliability standards,” he said. “People are not as concerned as how to make an AFM work these days. … What you need to do is dumb down the instrument so you don’t have to be a Ph.D. in metrology. The Ph.D. guys can analyze the results.”
One of the biggest challenges at the dawning of a nanotool market is marketing. — promoting but not exaggerating the equipment’s potential. It can be a fine line in an emerging area with hundreds seeking dominance.
“A lot of people will tell you it’s in instrumentation … where you make your money first,” Babcock said. “A lot of people are going to take advantage of that. That explains a lot of the cool tools you’re seeing. … But there’s only a handful of profitable nano companies.”
Small Times Magazine contains a longer version of this story. Click here for a free subscription.
August 4, 2003 – Nikon Semiconductor Inspection Technologies Group (SITECH) has unveiled a metrology tool designed for the 90nm node and below. The NRM-3100 is designd to measure lithographic exposure with enough bandwidth to accommodate the 70nm node, and boasts throughput of over 150 wafers per hour. Additional options include a focus mark measurement and stepper and angle management systems.
July 29, 2003 — Veeco Instruments Inc., a Woodbury, N.Y.-based provider of metrology tools and process equipment, reported a $1.1 million net loss for the second quarter, or 4 cents per share, versus a $1.6 million net loss for the period in 2002.
Second quarter revenues were $73.4 million, versus $77.3 million a year ago. Edward Braun, Veeco’s chairman and chief executive, said in a prepared statement that the company maintained or increased its market share in its core areas. Veeco’s stock was down $1.44 at $19.06 per share in early afternoon trading.