Issue

The recession has caused CEOs to revisit the fixed cost issue and call upon value chain producers to provide a variable and lower cost solution with aggregated expertise and scalable learning. Jack Harding, eSilicon Corporation

Fab spending has been sliding since early 2008 and is poised to sink to a 10-year low in 2009, according to recent data and projections from SEMI???but the good news is that 2010 could see a 90% surge in fab investments.

Research at Intel Labs covered at the chipmaker’s annual event (June 18, Mountain View, CA) covered the major categories of eco-innovation, 3D graphics on the Internet, mobility, and enterprise.

Researchers at Georgia Tech say they have experimentally demonstrated the potential for graphene to replace copper for on-chip interconnects and help extend performance scaling for silicon-based ICs.

Oerlikon Solar announced during this spring’s Intersolar in Munich that it had achieved 11% initial power conversion efficiency on its full-size micromorph (a thin-film technology) modules (1.4m²), or 151Watts of initial power.

Applied Materials says its new Endura CuBS RFX PVD system, qualified for copper barrier/seed deposition technology at 32nm and 22nm for production of logic and flash memory, provides a lower cost/wafer than competing technologies, including CVD alternatives, by as much as 40%???calculating a normalized COO of the 130Å Ta + 450Å RFX Cu process (CuBS) at $1/wafer, according to Marek Radko, the firm’s BEOL GPM manager.

Given the general concern about the safety of highly toxic materials in transport and use, it is likely that use of sub-atmospheric gas sources will grow for reasons of general public safety. Al Brown, RUSHBROOK and Karl Olander, ATMI

Whether flash lamp or sub-melt laser annealing is used for 22nm node ultra shallow junction, the annealing process and equipment must also be optimized to prevent strain relaxation, high-k/metal gate stack failure and wafer breakage. John Borland, J.O.B. technologies: Susan Felch; Zhinmin Wan, AIBT; Masayasu Tanjyo, Nissin Ion Equipment; Temel Buyuklimanli, EAG.

Wafers are bonded by applying precise combinations of physical pressure, temperature, and/or voltage. Pressure is measured as an average, assuming perfectly flat pressure plates. In practice, the pressure plates are often non-ideal, or they may have degraded over time. Applied pressure characterization is important for high yielding eutectic/thermocompression bonds. Kwan-yu Lai, Micralyne Inc. and Jeffrey G. Stark, Sensor Products Inc.

The arrival of new semiconductor device structures and processes are giving rise to non-visual defects, which require new ways of thinking about yield management. Ralph Spicer, Qcept Technologies.