Issue

The Taiwan government faces real challenges in raising the capital for its DRAM consolidation effort, and it will expect the dubt to be repaid to its state-owned banks. Rupert Hammond-Chambers, US-Taiwan Business Council, Arlington, VA USA

Simulations suggest that if the polishing pressure, relative sliding speed, and mean slurry thickness are held constant when scaling to 450mm, then slurry consumption will increase moderately and the wafer and pad temperature will be essentially unchanged. Leonard Borucki, Ara Philipossian, Araca Inc., Mesa, AZ USA; Michael Goldstein, Intel Corp., Santa Clara, CA USA

300mm Prime efforts to date have failed to achieve the program goals of a 50% cycle time reduction and 30% cost reduction; however, simulations suggest that 450mm will be able to at least deliver close to a 30% cost reduction. Scotten W. Jones, IC Knowledge LLC, Georgetown, MA USA

The consortia model minimizes cost and risk, and seems to have emerged as the preferred business model to facilitate EUV introduction. Warren Montgomery, CNSE assignee to sematech; Bryan Rice, Intel assignee to sematech, Austin, TX USA

How defectivity improvements via enhanced point-of-use (POU) resist filtration can be reproduced on next-generation process equipment. Toru Umeda, Shuichi Tsuzuki, Toru Numaguchi, Pall Corp., Inashiki-gun, Ibarakiken, Japan