Europe is speeding up R&D in deep submicron processing
06/01/1998
Europe is speeding up R&D in deep submicron processing
Jan Wauters,
IMEC, Leuven, Belgium
With the increased globalization of economies and the finalization of a true unified European economic region, the European market becomes a very attractive business playground. Europe consumes 21% of all ICs worldwide at end-use level, but produces only 9%. That makes Europe very dependent, and its industry vulnerable. Moreover, its governments restrict progress that could help this rapidly changing industry survive.
At the same time, the electronics industry, and the microelectronics industry in particular, requires more and more heavy investments in R&D and in state-of-the-art production facilities. Such investments in turn have to be taken in an ever-more competitive climate between companies to increase their market share, as well as between countries and regions to attract this kind of industry. R&D is more and more the key issue at stake in the electronics industry. That`s why some regions in Europe have decided to actively support microelectronics and information technology, to attract new business initiatives to their region, such as Scotland and the Grenoble, France, area.
In 1984, the local government of Flanders, Belgium, committed itself to actively support microelectronics as one of the key future industries. Out of this, IMEC (Inter University Microelectronics Center) was born, a microelectronics R&D center based in Leuven. Its strategy is to perform research to anticipate industry`s needs by 3-10 years. IMEC developed itself to become the largest independent microelectronics R&D center in the region, with a global budget of $70 million in 1997 and a staff of over 750.
This total income of IMEC is increasingly originating from contract research (more than 60%) with companies and institutions worldwide. Activities include design technologies, digital telecom systems, process steps and modules such as advanced optical lithography and back-end processing, process integration, optoelectronic components, microsystems, packaging, nonvolatile memories, solar cells, as well as training of engineers from industry in ASIC design.
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Figure 1. IMEC produces multiproject wafers containing several designs on one chip to reduce prototyping costs.
Need of joint R&D
It is of utmost importance that semiconductor companies initiate R&D projects at the right time so that new products can get to market when high profits can be made. This time frame is now extremely short, which makes planning R&D a difficult and risky business. At the same time, the new process technology generations predicted by the SIA Roadmap require enormous efforts from both financial and human resources viewpoints. The transfer of knowledge from research to manufacturing has to speed up to meet competition.
Joint R&D is rapidly becoming a necessary step in the development of new semiconductor products. The careful choice of R&D strategies requires designers and process developers to work more closely together, particularly in Europe. Furthermore, although the evolution of process technologies may be relatively easy to predict, semiconductor companies have to focus on fairly distant goals. Thus, cooperation with renowned R&D microelectronics centers becomes a key issue.
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Figure 2. IMEC`s test wafer, called "Pegasus," has been used for the process development and characterization of thin-film multilayer structures. It contains two metal layers: an isolation layer and a passivation layer.
At IMEC, considerable research has been performed in a selected number of areas, which has resulted in the IMEC Industrial Affiliation Programs (IIAP). IIAP is a tight R&D cooperation scheme that allows industrial researchers to integrate into IMEC research teams focused on a specific advanced research program or technology area for at least one year. In such projects as deep-UV lithography and ultraclean processing, a number of industrial partners sign up to jointly develop a new process technology step or module. As part of this collaboration, the technology owned by IMEC can be transferred to the industrial partner. For each industrial partner, a project is defined that fits into the overall IIAP program, but allows the industrial partner to tune the bilateral project to some of its particular needs.
In this type of R&D cooperation, intellectual property rights must be clearly defined. For this reason, before a project
starts, the deliverables are labeled into two types, forming part of the agreement. The more generic or methodological type of results are shared by IMEC and licensed to other partners in the program, but company-specific data or confidential information stays under the exclusive ownership of the industrial partner.
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The benefits of joint R&D projects are large: each partner in the collaboration obtains access to strategic research at an early stage. Furthermore, close collaboration of a number of R&D teams into so-called mixed teams provides cross-fertilization and enhances the process of technology transfer. Finally, joint R&D offers a competitive advantage in strategic results, fast time-to-market, and reduced R&D spending due to the cost sharing principle. IMEC offers IIAPs in several areas (Table 1).
Advanced CMOS for Europe
In a European context, there are a number of initiatives to stimulate the microelectronics industry. In March 1997, the European Union launched a large-scale project called Advanced CMOS for Europe (ACE), coordinated by IMEC, that aims at developing front-end and back-end process steps and modules for tomorrow`s mainstream process technology, 0.18-?m CMOS. The goal of ACE is to be able to process first 0.18-?m silicon this year, and make first results for the interconnect structures available by 3Q98. The objectives of the ACE are found in Table 2.
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The timing of the project is in line with the most advanced worldwide competition, with the new 1997 SIA Roadmap, and with advanced European industrial roadmaps. The project is the successor of the ADEQUAT+ project and relies partly on its obtained results.