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THE MICRO INTERVIEW

Green research center's Shadman: 'ESH has to be at the heart of process development'

The National Science Foundation/Semiconductor Research Corp. Engineering Research Center for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing: The moniker is a mouthful, even for semiconductor veterans accustomed to jargon-heavy discourse and an alphabet soup of acronyms and initialisms. But behind the lengthy name is one of the most vibrant collaborative efforts between the chipmaking and academic research communities. In fact, many participants see the ongoing interdisciplinary activities conducted by the center as crucial to the future prosperity of the industry.

Begun in 1996 and now composed of 35 industrial member companies and seven universities --Arizona (the lead institution), Arizona State, MIT and its Lincoln Lab, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Cornell-- the center has an ambitious purpose: "to create technological and educational solutions to lead the semiconductor industry in a new era of environmentally friendly manufacturing." Its goals include developing novel strategies to solve existing environmental, safety, and health (ESH) problems; creating green manufacturing processes; demonstrating positive impacts of "design for environment" concepts on all aspects of chipmaking; and developing innovative engineering educational programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels. More than 20 professors, 40 undergrads, and 50 grad students work in labs at the various institutions on four semiconductor manufacturing thrust areas: back-end-of-line processes, front-end-of-line processes, factory water and energy use, and patterning/photolithography. (For more information on the center, visit http://www.erc.arizona.edu.)

The center's energetic director and champion of the design for environment approach to chipmaking is Farhang Shadman, professor of chemical and environmental engineering at the University of Arizona. MICRO's Tom Cheyney attended the center's annual site review meeting in Tucson in early February, where he interviewed Shadman about the center's activities as well as his vision of how the industry can move to more environmentally conscious, integrated methods of process development and manufacturing.

MICRO: How did the center's original strategic plan develop, and what do you see happening during the next five years?

Shadman: When the center started in 1996, one of the first tasks that we had was development of our overall strategic plan. We based that plan on the technology roadmap, on the strategic plan of the Semiconductor Research Corp., and on the plans of the individual, large user companies. The original plan was based on all of this input coming together, and we tried to make it balanced among the environmental aspects of existing processes, the development of new processes, and work on fundamentals. As time goes on and the center becomes a little bit more mature, as far as the projects that are going on, we're going to be shifting the interests toward the concept of design for environment. This means getting into the development of new processes that have ESH as one of the key metrics. What we're talking about is not just being smaller, faster, and cheaper, but also being greener as one of the criteria in developing new processes. So the strategic plan for the next five years is going to emphasize not only things that we're doing now, but more of the design for environment, development of processes, alternatives to the existing chemicals, and [alternatives to those] existing chemistries or existing processes that for one reason or another are environmentally problematic.

Q: How have you seen the attitudes toward environmentally friendly manufacturing practices within the industry evolve during the time the center has been open?

A: The attitude overall has been a very good one. I was involved with ESH aspects of other industries for some time before the semiconductor industry, such as the oil and automotive industries. What is very, very encouraging about [people in] the semiconductor industry is that they are really working on this problem, paying attention to it before it becomes a crisis. In fact, the start of this center speaks for itself: We want to have an activity in this area; we're going to invest in it, to basically prevent problems from coming up rather than waiting until we have a crisis on our hands. The impact that the center has had is to push for design for environment. There is a tendency to separate ESH from process development, and say, 'well, look, we have problems of our own in process development, don't add another constraint to the set of constraints that we have.' This is understandable in many ways, since process people typically don't want to have another constraint to begin with.

But more and more companies are realizing that the cost of bringing ESH in line or taking it into consideration too late is just too high. The penalty is too big -- it's not just because of good citizenship that we want to do it, it's to be able to survive. The original vision that we had was interesting. We mentioned that ESH might be precompetitive, and that's why it's good for the university. Many of our industrial members quickly recognized that in fact it could be one of the most competitive things. It could be an area which could determine the survival of certain industries. It's quite practical, rather than just good citizenship. So the impact that the center has had is to promote more and more the idea that ESH has to be at the heart of process development rather than an afterthought.

Q: How is the member companies' participation in the center set up?

A: We have two representatives from each member company. One is a process person, the other is an ESH person. We didn't want to populate our representation with all of us who agree with each other. If a group of ESH people sit together, we'll all think it's a very important thing and we'll support each other, but we're not going to have any impact on the process. So more than half the people here are process people. The key is that if you're going to do processes, you have to do it with the heavyweight process experts. The way the center works is that you bring ESH expertise and process expertise together in the team that we have here so that there will be this codevelopment.

Q: A green process development, so to speak. You've talked about how you are pushing to make the program more international. Could you speak a little bit about that?

A: Companies are international, and ESH does not really know boundaries any more. We opened the membership right away to the international community, and in fact we have been aggressively going after international participation. It's been very well received. What we are working out in our strategy is not just to bring international companies in, but also to link up with the best international centers outside the United States and have team efforts with them. So it's a very healthy direction.

Q: You mentioned something about limiting the number of member companies because if the center were to grow too much, you wouldn't be able to service and work with everyone. Do you need a cap on the number of companies?

A: We haven't decided on a cap, and we may never decide. But at the same time we realize that we really should. We are now at 35 members, and for a university center that is already a multiuniversity center, it is difficult sometimes to communicate with so many members. One luxury that we have, a kind of a blessing that is a burden as well, is that while most other centers have the problem of getting people excited about their centers and coming and participating, the problem we are having here is actually the opposite. We have so much direct involvement, which we welcome, but it's hard for the university center to manage. So what we decided to do is not to try and limit it but control it in such a way that everyone in a company that needs to be involved is somehow involved and has a say. We find other mechanisms--like working groups, technology groups--for teaming them together. And our idea for membership is not just to raise money. If the companies have a major donation, of equipment and so on, they are facilitated. Because the idea here is we want members because of their technical contribution. We have rejected quite a few membership applications even though there was money involved. It was just not the right facilities coming together.

Q: What's the annual budget right now?

A: Right now, the cash part of it is $2.8 million. But this is without the contributions that come from cost-sharing among the universities and donations of the equipment and so on. If you consider all of those, the budget would be closer to $4 million. If we did not receive these tools, which are all very, very valuable to us, we would have to buy them. Last year alone, we received several million dollars [worth of tools] from major companies.The universities themselves are also making major investments. Many of the faculty members you see here are only partially sponsored by ERC; the rest of the support for students and so on would actually come from the universities.

Q: What do you see as the major challenges both to the center and to the industry in this area in the next 5 to 10 years?

A: The center was very involved in the writing of the ESH part of the roadmap, which was a very positive experience. One major challenge is to stay proactive, but we are now at a turning point, with these other process-oriented, process-focused challenges that we have in this industry. Are we going to keep them isolated, separate from ESH concerns, or are we going to bring ESH in? The industry is looking at a large number of new chemicals and introducing them to the R&D aspects of semiconductor manufacturing. For many of these chemicals we don't have information on the physical properties, let alone the ESH properties. Are we going to wait until things are completely at the end of process development, and at that point are we going to figure out how to handle another PFC? You see? We're having those new dielectric materials, new etchants coming in, so are we going to be totally tied and essentially lose our options? I think that would be challenge number one -- to recognize that ESH is not a luxury, that it has to come in early. I think it has happened but it requires that we speak the language of process. We have to break through this boundary that ESH is on the facility side and process is on the process side, and one is the support group for the other. This issue has two sides too. We are not saying that ESH has to advise process on what to do. In fact if you don't have the involvement of process people in the ESH research, that [research] will also become totally irrelevant because we may be just looking for impractical things that are really not relevant to the process.

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