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A research team led by U. of Massachusetts Chemical Engineer James Watkins has developed a new method of depositing copper films within tiny channels etched in silicon wafers.

The technique offers an efficient way to create the ever-smaller circuitry demanded by the microelectronics industry, the journal Science reported. The conventional fabrication methods deposit metals and other materials onto silicon from either a gas or liquid solution. Both approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages, according to Science.

But Watkins’ group took a different view. “We reasoned that individually, each of the methods is probably limited in a fundamental way, but if you could combine the most desirable attributes of the methods into a single process, then you could solve the problem,” Watkins said. “This is possible by depositing the materials from a supercritical fluid.”

This is a substance that has some properties of a liquid and some properties of a gas, Watkins explained.

“If you heat and compress a gas like carbon dioxide, it can be used to dissolve a wide range of compounds. The solution, however, does not behave like a liquid, but rather like a gas, and therefore flows easily over complex surfaces and into narrow gaps.”

Watkins called this combination of properties “chemical fluid deposition” and said it was ideal for the fabrication of tiny devices with complicated features.

–WaferNews

October 9, 2001 – Seoul, Korea – Hynix Semiconductor Inc., said it is considering selling one of its semiconductor facilities as part of its restructuring efforts, but denied reports that it is in advanced talks with a Chinese consortium, according to the Korea Herald.

Local newspapers reported that Hynix is attempting to sell parts of its semiconductor fabs to a Chinese consortium, the first move ever to shed its core memory business units.

The semiconductor maker has been spinning off and shedding non-core business units in order to improve its profitability and secure cash to stay afloat, amid a deepening slump in the PC memory chip sector.

Hynix stressed that its talks with Chinese companies are just one of the many possibilities.

“Although Hynix is weighing the possibility of selling one of its fabs to a variety of entities, both public and private, it has not yet made any decision on such a sale,” Hynix said in a statement. Hynix said it is now aggressively pursuing possible strategic alliances with some of the world’s other leading semiconductor manufacturers for such deals.

Local press, meantime, quoted government officials as saying that Hynix embraced the sell off of part of its fabs to China, as it tried to meet the request from creditors in connection with fresh loan deals.

A group of Hynix officials are now in China, advancing the talks with potential Chinese companies, and the Chinese negotiators will visit Korea within the month for fact-finding missions, local reports said. The Chinese buyer would be a consortium of city administrations, universities and electronics firms, underscoring China’s ambition to enter the global semiconductor market.

China has been expanding investment in semiconductor sector since 1998. It plans to set up 30 fabs in the Shanghai region alone by 2010.

Local reports said the Chinese buyer, however, is demanding a transfer of cutting-edge memory chip manufacturing technologies, raising the fear of giving away core technology in a hurry to rescue trouble-ridden Hynix.

Hynix is currently operating a total of 13 memory chip production facilities, seven of which are based on 200mm wafers. Hynix said it expects to gain about 745 billion won by the end of November by selling some assets, including a 12% stake in the U.S.-based Maxtor Corp. for about $113 million.

In September, the company agreed to its TFT-LCD unit to a consortium led by Taiwan’s Cando Corp. for about $650 million.

NEW MARKET PLAYER

Chris Anderson

MIDLAND, MI—The Dow Chemical Co., boasting global sales of more than $23 billion in 2000, recently leapt into the critical environments market with the introduction of the INTACTA IC 1000 polyurethane glove that the company touts as having “excellent ESD properties and extremely low extractables”.

In early September, Dow announced the INTACTA gloves would be distributed in the United States by Fisher Safety Co., a division of Fisher Scientific (Pittsburgh, PA).

The gloves are made using Dow's process technology that uses an aqueous polyurethane delivery system as opposed to solvent-based delivery. The result, Dow says, is a glove that is less expensive to manufacture yet still maintains the beneficial characteristics of polyurethane. The gloves will be priced to be competitive with nitrile gloves currently on the market and silicone-, powder- and NRL-free which addresses a growing concern of allergic reactions to these substances.

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“We believe this glove will make a strong impact on the market, because of its inherent characteristics of lower contamination levels which lead to higher productivity,” says Patty Mishic, marketing manager with Dow.

But how will Dow's presence effect the already crowded critical environment glove market, where smaller companies are the rule not the exception? Industry executives say it is still too early to tell, while noting that the market today is much smaller than it was even two years ago, as the semiconductor industry settles into one of its cyclical valleys.


Dow Chemical jumps into the crowded cleanroom glove market with its INTACT IC 1000, shown in action above.
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“Welcome to the world of gloves,” says Roger Gass, CEO of TechNiGlove International Inc, Yorba Linda, Calif.-based glove manufacturer. “It's a tough, tough market out there right now and one that is very different from when they started to develop this product.”

But Mishic says this makes it a particularly good time to be bringing a new glove to market. “We think this will help us in the long run,” she says. “We can get a feel for how the market is accepting it, how the glove is performing and it's easier to do that in this market.”

Nevertheless it will take a lot of work to get the glove established, says Richard Renehan, president of Renco Inc. (Manchester-By-The-Sea, MA), whose gloves have been used by NASA and Argonne National Labs. “It's just not that easy to get companies to switch,” he says. “First of all, it is a very long sales cycle, as long as 18 months in some cases, and cleanroom managers are going to be reluctant to introduce an unknown variable into the process.”

Mishic says she clearly understands the challenges that Dow will face early on, but is confident they can be overcome. “I think the first thing we understand, and that this glove addresses, is that fabs are facing more stringent requirements in the cleanliness of their manufacturing,” says Mishic.

Dow hopes these characteristics, as well as the fit and flexibility of the gloves, will win them customers. In the meantime, Dow will monitor competing gloves on the market—everything from PVC to nitrile and other polyurethane gloves. “How the market reacts is yet to be seen,” Mishic says. “Right now we are just trying to judge [the competition] and provide a better glove to the market.”

by Ken Goldstein, Ph.D.

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The cleanrooms industry has made the case that we can use minienvironments to downgrade the cleanliness of our cleanrooms without sacrificing contamination control in the critical places. But this in no way proves that we should do this. The decision to actually do so must invariably follow from a detailed economic analysis—in other words, the benefits must outweigh the costs.

In my last column (CleanRooms, August 2001), we discussed some of the benefits of utilizing minienvironments. Essentially, this boiled down to “building less facility.” We would install fewer filters driven by fewer or smaller fans as well as air-handling units that required fewer or smaller chill water coils and fewer or smaller pumps. With a smaller fan heat load, we would need fewer or smaller chillers, and with fewer or smaller air-handling units, we would need to devote less space and less steel and concrete structure to support these reduced loads. And because we were building “less” facility, we could surely design it and build it faster and less expensively.

Note that these are all capital items. Similar savings would be expected for expense items such as energy and maintenance—so far, so good.

The preliminary financial analyses for this approach indicated savings of 15 percent to 30 percent for the cost of the facility—a significant sum. But this was not to be. A number of significant “additional costs” had not been included in our original thinking: the costs of the minienvironments themselves; the cost of wafer boxes, cassettes, pods and similar containers; the costs of hardware associated with the critical I/O (input/output) functions at the interface between the tightly controlled interior of the minienvironment and the less-controlled cleanroom ambient; and the costs of the automation hardware and software required to move materials.

And as luck would have it, these “additional costs” exceeded the previously identified cost savings. In other words, the total project cost of the newer (dirtier) cleanrooms using minienvironments turned out to be more expensive than standard (cleaner) cleanrooms without minienvironments.

While this did not appear to be a good beginning, people kept experimenting and a few brave souls—mostly in Asia—actually constructed new facilities using these techniques. And they tried to look at the big picture. Specifically, everyone had been looking at the facilities-related cost savings and weighing those against the tool-related cost additions.

The predictions of faster design and construction schedules turned out to be correct. While important, this was not enough by itself to sell users on the concepts of minienvironment or barrier/isolation technology. But at this time, people began to consider the process advantages of this new technology. Here is where they discovered the true rewards that more than made up for the increased costs.

It turned out that the physical barriers really did work and performed excellently at their intended function—they effectively isolated the sensitive product and process from aerosol contaminants. Numerous studies demonstrated that with proper design and construction, minienvironments could supply clean air that was essentially particle free. This improved contamination control led directly to superior yields; and in the microelectronics industries, this alone guaranteed great interest.

It was then that users began to notice the interactions among the facility, the tool set and minienvironments themselves. During the start-up of a new manufacturing plant, individual tools are installed and started up, often one at a time. As soon as a tool is installed, engineers begin testing it; and as soon as testing is complete, operators begin using it for production. At the same time, other nearby tools are being moved into place and installed and started up. This process continues throughout the life of the facility as older tools are replaced with newer ones.

The problem is that tool installation is, by nature, very dirty because it is a construction activity.

Almost invariably, these tasks involve cutting, drilling and grinding as well as other particle-generating activities. And here too, the isolation provided by the minienvironments performed superbly. It was quickly discovered that the minienvironments effectively isolated the production activities from nearby construction tasks involved in the installation of other tools. It was now possible to keep turning out product with little regard to nearby activities that would normally be considered to be highly contaminating. The result was faster production ramps, higher tool uptime numbers and fewer tool shutdowns to accommodate tool installations.

With higher yields, faster production ramps and fewer shutdowns, it seemed that the wave of the future had arrived. And to be sure, the manufacturing firms that opted for these types of cleanrooms were convinced—and kept building them.

But again, most readers understand that while common, minienvironments have not completely taken over—quite to the contrary. It has been a long slow process in America. We will look at why and offer a few final comments on the subject in our next installment.

Dr. Ken Goldstein is a principal with Cleanroom Consultants Inc. (Scottsdale, AZ) and is a recognized expert in planning and designing of cleanrooms and ultrahigh purity systems. He has been associated with the cleanrooms industry for 20 years, and is a senior member of the IEST. He is active in WG-012 (Cleanroom Design) and WG-028 (Minienvironments).

By Jeff Karoub
Small Times Staff Writer

Sept. 25, 2001 – Researchers have demonstrated what could become an important tool for developing nanoscale devices and systems, including computers of unrivaled speed and power.

A team led by two University of Michigan (U-M) physics professors and two Naval Research Laboratory researchers have developed a new technology for optically probing individual quantum objects. They wrote about their breakthrough in the Sept. 21 issue of the journal Science.

The tool could one day be applied to a wide range of applications, including the development of large, flat-panel video displays and the study of single biomolecules. But by far its biggest potential use, researchers say, is in the quest to create a quantum computer, which would harness the power of atoms to vastly improve memory and speed.

U-M is one of several universities and labs pursuing the development of quantum computers, which would gain enormous processing power through the ability to be in multiple states and to perform all possible tasks simultaneously.

“One of the designs put forward for a quantum computer assumes that this technology could be developed,” said Duncan Steel, a U-M physics professor and one of the Science article’s authors.

“Now that this is happening, it makes the design one step closer to reality.”

The technique builds on previous advances, including the development several years ago of the near field scanning optical microscope, which improved the spatial resolution of optical information on the nanoscale.

In order to get high resolution, however, scientists must put the fiber-optic probe extremely close to the surface. Steel said the image is impressive, but it only gives part of the picture because the optical signal is distorted in part because of the close range.

To overcome that, Steel and his colleagues combined the near-field microscopy with far-field optical spectroscopy, a powerful technique that provides more information about the entire system under observation.

Steel said the big picture is critical because quantum dots, or inorganic nanocrystals, are like snowflakes: No two are exactly alike.

“Now, we can take advantage of the whole wafer – we can look at all the dots,” he said. “That’s the breakthrough in terms of capability.”

Steel said those looking for a quick commercial application might be disappointed, but it was necessary to gain a greater understanding of how things work in a quantum state.

“At this point, everyone is kind of getting their Tinker Toys out of the box,” he said. “We need to see what pieces we have, which are missing. … We’re still a long way from demonstrating a working quantum computer.”

One nanotechnology expert agreed, but said it’s an important step in the effort to develop quantum computers and other advanced nanoscale devices.

“This isn’t a simple thing to do, so this group deserves credit for advancing the field,” said Jim Murday, executive secretary of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Technology group, which oversees the federal government’s National Nanotechnology Initiative.

Related Stories If terrorists take a quantum leap, U.S. systems would be vulnerable


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CONTACT THE AUTHOR:
Jeff Karoub [email protected] or call 734-528-6291.

September 17, 2001 – Phoenix, AZ – Adding to its emerging MiniGate portfolio, ON Semiconductor today unveiled six high-performance triple-gate devices in tiny Ultra-Small-8 (US8) packages drivers/buffers for computing, networking and portable applications including LEDs.

Designed with three gates in only 6.2 mm(2) area of board space, the devices enable designers who require three-gate functionality, to place three independent gates in the same amount of space formerly occupied by a single SOT-23 device, according to the company.

ON Semiconductor designed the series of high-performance, low-voltage buffers/inverters with CMOS/LVTTL compatible inputs to enable designers of next-generation electronics to benefit from the ability to interface with multiple voltage systems, ON Semiconductor said. The over-voltage tolerant input enables the devices to interface directly with higher voltage circuits, with no need for logic level translators. The over-voltage tolerance at the output allows the designer to select any voltage between 0 and 5.5 volts as the output level, while maintaining input compatibility with the rest of the system. The open drain output feature allows customers to create wired-OR/wired-AND configurations.

The devices were individually designed to allow the company’s customers flexibility when searching for low-voltage standard logic solutions to complete their designs.

By Tom Henderson
Small Times Senior Writer

Sept. 6, 2001 — Seven years ago, Michael O’Dwyer was hardly the type one would expect to head a company winning $10.25 million defense contracts from the U.S. government.

He was a 50-year-old Australian shopkeeper, a former manager of a Woolworth store in Brisbane and an amateur inventor who was regarded as a bit of a nut.

When Wayne Downing, former commander general of U.S. Army Special Forces, first met O’Dwyer, “for about the first 20 minutes I thought he was mad, certifiably mad.”

“We all thought this retailer and grocer from Australia was a real kook,” said Art Schatz, a former Navy pilot who until recently worked for the Australian government in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Australian gun makers.

“If you understood anything about weapons, you understood immediately why this thing could never, never work,” said Schatz.

Both Schatz and Downing now work for O’Dwyer, whose electronic firearm with no mechanical parts was first displayed at an inventor’s show in his homeland in 1994.

“After 30 minutes, I realized that Mike had stumbled on probably the most revolutionary thing that could be done with firearms in about the last 500 years,” Downing said.

Downing is now a member of the board of directors of O’Dwyer’s publicly traded Australian company, Metal Storm Ltd.; Schatz is vice president of the U.S. subsidiary, Metal Storm Inc.

O’Dwyer had sold his food-wholesale business in 1991 to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams, burning through the $800,000 (U.S.) over the next five years. At a crucial juncture in 1996, private investors kicked in $1 million to pay for a six-month trial by Lockheed Martin Corp. in the United States.

Successful trials in the United States and Australia have led to total funding by the two governments of about $50 million, including the $10.25 million grant from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in March of 2000 and a $1.6 million grant in May by the Defense Science and Technology Organization of the Australian Department of Defense for a rifle that is being called an Advanced Individual Combat Weapon.

U.S. corporate partners include Scientific Applications International Corp., a Fortune 500 defense contractor headquartered in San Diego, and Alliant Techsystems Inc., an aerospace and defense contractor headquartered in Hopkins, Minn., that specializes in ballistics engineering.

In June 1999, the company went public on the Australian Stock Exchange in an initial public offering valued at $135 million and currently is in the process of applying for listing on the U.S. Nasdaq exchange. The company, despite its contracts, has yet to turn a profit, and its stock price has hovered at about 50 cents a share after hitting a high last year of about $1.50.

Despite the decline in share price, Metal Storm was named the Queensland 2001 Rising Star in May by the accounting firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd.

With O’Dwyer’s handguns and rifles, bullets are stacked in the barrel, with explosive charges in between. A tiny metal cone in the front of each bullet expands slightly when the bullet in front of it is discharged, sealing off gases and preventing other bullets from firing prematurely.

O’Dwyer’s guns can be fitted with a variety of barrels at the same time, each capable of holding different calibers or projectile types.

One 36-barrel prototype gun has fired 180 nine-millimeter rounds at the rate of a million rounds a minute, say company officials. Conventional rapid-fire weapons are capable of bursts of 4,500 rounds a minute. Rounds can be fired before the previous round has even left the barrel.

DARPA likes the technology because, in theory, a sniper could fire off three shots before recoil affected his aim.

Related Story: Land mine alternative would distinguish friend from foe


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CONTACT THE AUTHOR:
Tom Henderson at [email protected] or call 734-528-6292.

by Laureen Belleville

Keeping the product or application clean and the user protected and comfortable are primary functions of cleanroom gloves. There are a number of product variables that should be specified to address your particular needs.


There are a number of glove variables to fit your particular need. Many alternatives and new features can be found outlines on the table below.
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Increased demands for critical clean environments are pressuring manufacturers to develop still more alternatives. For example, the latest announcement from Dow Chemical Company details a natural rubber latex-free critical environment glove made from Intacta performance polymers. The polymers utilize a process technology that allows polyurethanes to be used in an aqueous delivery system. According to the company, the process “revolutionizes glove manufacturing” by providing a lower-cost alternative to competitive solvent-based dispersion processes while maintaining the high-performance characteristics of polyurethane chemistry.

Another manufacturer, Sempermed, has responded by constructing a powder-free, micro-rough textured latex glove from halogenated natural rubber latex. Intended for use in medical applications, the glove is molded on an enlarged former to maximize comfort, tactile sensitivity, barrier protection and protection from blood-borne pathogens.

Many other alternatives and new features can be found in the offerings outlined on the accompanying table. Please note that the table is not all-inclusive, it lists only the products of those manufacturers who responded to our request for information.

Distributors of cleanroom gloves
The following companies distribute cleanroom gloves:

  • Associated Bag Company, Milwaukee, WI, Tel: (800) 926-6100, Fax: (800) 926-4610, www.associatedbag.com

  • Connecticut Clean Room Corp., Bristol, CT, Tel: (860) 589-0049, Fax: (860) 585-7355, www.connecticutcleanroom.com
  • Contamination Control Products, Neptune City, NJ, Tel: (732) 869-3400, Fax: (732) 869-2999, www.ccpcleanroom.com
  • General Lab & Cleanroom Supply, Newbury Park, CA, Tel: (888) 869-8500, Fax: (805) 376-6079
  • Hal Sharpe Associates Inc., Chico, CA, Tel: (530) 899-1555, Fax: (530) 899-1559, www.halsharpe.com
  • High-Tech Conversions Inc., Enfield, CT, Tel: (860) 749-1622, Fax: (860) 749-0747, www.high-techconversions.com
  • Liberty Industries Inc., E. Berlin, CT, Tel: (800) 828-5656, Fax: (860) 828-8879, www.liberty-ind.com
  • Prudential Cleanroom Services, Irvine, CA, Tel: (800) CLASS10 (252-7710), Fax: (949) 261-1947, www.pcs-clean.com
  • Servitex Cleanroom Services, Durham, NC, Tel: (919) 957-9800, Fax: (919) 957-0403
  • Stauffer Glove & Safety, Red Hill, PA, Tel: (215) 679-4446, Fax: (215) 679-5053, www.stauffersafety.com
  • Ultrapure Technology, Suwanee, GA, Tel: (800) 932-0309, Fax: (770) 932-0809, www.ultrapuretechnology.com

Manufacturers of Cleanroom Gloves
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Manufacturers of Cleanroom Gloves (con’t)
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Manufacturers of Cleanroom Gloves (con’t)
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By Tom Henderson
Small Times Senior Writer

Aug. 29, 2001 — Josh Wolfe isn’t the only venture capitalist who used to be an investment banker. He may be the only one, though, who has helped with AIDS research.

Wolfe, 24, is a managing partner of the Lux Capital Group, the New York venture capital firm behind “The Nanotech Report.”

Years before he was writing about nanotechnology, he spent time studying the effects of AIDS on children at the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn. Wolfe was a high school student at the time, but he’s listed as co-author on articles in Cell Vision and the Journal of Leukocyte Biology.

“We were at the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic,” said Dominic Auci, Wolfe’s mentor then who is now manager of the biomedical labs at the Pall Corp., a maker of blood filters in Port Washington, N.Y.

Auci recalled that when Wolfe, recipient of a Westinghouse Science Scholarship, came in during his senior year of high school in 1995 to ask if he could work with AIDS patients. The scholarship paid for his research time.

“We were on the front line,” said Auci. “We were taking our lives in our hands, and it wasn’t something we wanted a high school kid doing.”

But Wolfe persisted, and Auci relented. “He was a remarkable young man, and everyone in the lab took a liking to him immediately. Josh put together a lot of his own concepts from bits and pieces we were doing in the lab. That was what was so impressive about him.”

The scholarship was supposed to last six months, during the end of his senior year and into the summer. But the research that led to the papers wasn’t done, yet, “so he’d come in after school and on weekends. He was a hard-working kid and he had a vision,” said Auci.

Wolfe ended up coming in for much of his free time his first three years in college. At the beginning of college, he was leaning toward a career in science. Auci, of all people, pushed him to the financial world.

“I was one of the people who encouraged him toward business. He had bigger fish to fry. I was getting my MBA at the time and felt that whatever came out of the lab had to have more than an intellectual foundation. It had to have marketable applications.”

“He was a big influence on me going into business,” said Wolfe. “It was absolutely my intent to get my MD and Ph.D. I was very into immunology and pathology. But we’d be in the lab and while the centrifuge was spinning, Dominic would be trading futures and options, and that seemed a hell of a lot more interesting than the centrifuge.

“Money is an exciting thing. Money and science make sense.”

Wolfe graduated from Cornell in 1999 with a degree in economics and finance, then worked in financial futures and options at Merrill Lynch and in investment banking at Salomon Smith Barney before co-founding Lux Capital last year.

Related story: VC firm’s report outlines nano challenges, opportunities


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CONTACT THE AUTHOR:
Tom Henderson at [email protected] or call 734-528-6292.

August 23, 2001 – Danvers, MA – Ibis Technology Corp. has elected Yuri Erokhin as its VP of wafer technology. Ibis also announced the resignations of two directors, Geoffrey Ryding and Peter Rose, who resigned to pursue other business opportunities together.

Yuri Erokhin joined Ibis in October 2000 as director of wafer technology, after a five-year career at Eaton Corp. (now Axcelis Technologies) where he was director of process technology in the Implant Systems Division. Erokhin led the department responsible for process development, worldwide applications support, and equipment demonstrations to prospective customers.

Prior to Axcelis, Erokhin was a research associate at North Carolina State U. investigating formation of silicided shallow junction and process-induced crystal defects in silicon. He holds a Ph.D. in microelectronics technology.