Issue

Momentous changes are ahead for the structure and business models of the semiconductor and allied industries, suggested several speakers and panel discussions at the SPIE Microlithography Symposium recently.

February chip sales down 3.3%, orders up 6%

Process enhances spin-on low-k dielectric processing

Semicon Europa, held last month in Munich, Germany, was less crowded than usual, and many companies shared booths with others. The war in Iraq and global economic conditions tempered the usual hoopla, but plenty of technical innovation was on display.

Although there were mixed messages about an uncertain lithography future at the SPIE Microlithography Symposium in Santa Clara, CA, Feb. 23–28, it appears that immersion optics may save the day.

Using a design that takes advantage of the inductance-dominated, high-frequency regime of on-chip interconnect, comparable or better performance than proposed on-chip optical interconnects is possible without the additional associated manufacturing challenges of on-chip optics. The design is capable of transmitting data at velocities near the speed of light and offers a 5¥ improvement in delay over a conventional repeater-insertion strategy

Laser dicer won't damage ultra-thin wafers

Considering that wafer cleaning is crucial to virtually every wafer-processing step, Solid State Technology asked several industry process experts: How do you perceive conventional wet chemistry or nonliquid wafer-cleaning technology evolving to meet advanced requirements for interfaces and particle control?

Nikon Precision Europe, Langen, Germany, has appointed Hiroshi Sano president. He has worked for Nikon since 1979, most recently at Nikon Precision Singapore Pte. Ltd., a subsidiary of Nikon Pre-cision Equipment Co.

In an industry moving rapidly to full automation, integrated metrology has been somewhat elusive. The combination of risks has kept its adoption at 2% or less.

A new era in film deposition control in semiconductor technology is being ushered in with atomic layer deposition. Milestones include the extension of cylinder and deep trench DRAM capacitors <100nm using new dielectric materials.

Microelectromechanical systems technology is a collection of miniature sensors and actuators that are fabricated using semiconductor-manufacturing techniques. MEMS have been used since the early 1990s in airbag sensors and ink-jet printer heads.

Despite thoughts that a wafer fab's use of test wafers is becoming passé, test wafers are used today more than ever to qualify processing and contamination control. This means that the overhead of test wafer storage and handling can be a significant factor in any fab operation, particularly a 300mm fab.

Over the past few years, various semiconductor manufacturers have ventured out to try bulk supply of specialty gases required for wafer processing.

Key developments such as improved spike anneal temperature control, enhanced low-temperature processing capability, and a radical-based oxidation process are extending the capabilities of rapid thermal processing for applications such as ultra-shallow junction activation and anneal, silicidation, and shallow trench isolation liner oxide formation to meet projected industry roadmap requirements for sub-100nm device design nodes.

Increasingly, new photoresists and novel polymer-rich plasma etch processes used in photomask manufacturing require that conventional wet stripping must be replaced with dry plasma-stripping techniques.