Pushing Moore's Law with minienvironments

09/01/2000

Lisa Coleman

PORTLAND, OR—Minienvironments are touted as the contamination control technology for 300-mm wafer manufacturing. But will minienvironments be able to keep up with future chip technology advances as forecasted in Moore's Law, which denotes circuit density doubling each year and thereby the potential power of computer chips?

Brooks Automation's Steve Silverman believes that Moore's Law also applies to particles. As circuit density increases, then particle size must decrease. "We have to deal with half the (particle) size and half the count every year-and-a-half to two years," says Silverman, project manager for contamination control at Brooks and a speaker at the CleanRooms West 2000 conference.

Silverman plans to discuss minienvironment technology during his session "Minienvironments for Advanced 300mm Applications," on Tuesday, Oct. 3 at the Oregon Convention Center.

The problem of particles and airborne molecular contamination (AMC) for wafer manufacturers is increasingly difficult. "Ten years ago a particle was like a stone on a football field. You didn't notice it. Today, it's like a stone on a postage stamp." Although minienvironment technology keeps improving to meet stringent semiconductor requirements, minienvironment manufacturers face a bigger challenge—developing their technology to help chip manufacturers achieve their density and power goals. "If you can't make the particles smaller, you can't make the chip smaller," notes Silverman.

Silverman predicts that in five years the industry will be faced with particles so small they defy measuring and filtering.