INDUSTRY NEWS

300-mm Imperative

MEMC Electronic Materials will shift its 300-mm silicon wafer program from its pilot line and begin full-scale production at a plant in Japan. To oversee the transition, the manufacturer has named Steve Brunkhorst as director of 300-mm manufacturing. MEMC has been making the large wafers at its Center of Excellence (COE) facility, established in 1997 in Utsunomiya, Japan.

"MEMC's 300-mm processes are sufficiently developed and ready to be implemented in a manufacturing environment," says Klaus von Hörde, president and CEO of the St. Peters, MO–based supplier. The company will transfer the technology to other MEMC plants using a "copy-exact" approach employed by leading chipmakers.

Over the past 18 months, the Japan-based COE has shipped 300-mm silicon wafers to start-up fabs in the United States, Europe, and Asia. The company, which is the world's third largest supplier of 300-mm wafers, says the COE has the capacity to expand to meet the expected demand for the next several years. Brunkhorst has worked at MEMC for 28 years and has more than seven years of management experience in 300-mm wafer manufacturing.

In related developments, news reports indicated that some chipmakers may postpone production at their 300-mm fabs. UMC reportedly said it may delay tool installation at a joint venture in Singapore with Infineon Technologies. Last autumn, however, Samsung Electronics announced it had begun mass producing memory chips in its initial 300-mm fab. The 512-Mb SDRAMs with 0.12-µm linewidths are being made at the company's fab in Seoul.

Sematech using Applied tool

International Sematech in Austin, TX, has received a CMP system from Applied Materials that the consortium will use to explore the development of 300-mm copper processes and low-k materials. The Reflexion system will be used for research into interconnects for chip generations ≤100 nm, Applied says. Sematech chose the Reflexion tool based on its experience with Applied's Mirra CMP system, which the consortium has been using to develop 200-mm wafer copper processes. Sematech hopes to extend its work to materials with a dielectric constant of <2.2, according to Applied.

The tool manufacturer says its Reflexion system has single-wafer megasonic cleaning with a two-stage brush scrub to keep defects low and to protect wafer output per square foot. An advanced monitoring capability measures remaining film thickness in real time, while the endpoint detection feature reads the wafer's entire surface to prevent overpolishing, Applied says.

IC maker likes digital MFC

A major North American IC manufacturer will incorporate a digital mass-flow controller (MFC) in the tool set at its 300-mm fab, the MFC's manufacturer reports. Mykrolis of Bedford, MA, says its IntelliFlow digital MFC, or DFC, offers gas-panel flexibility, small footprints, and thin-film uniformity. In addition, the component's onboard diagnostics continuously monitor performance and support e-diagnostics.

The chip manufacturer has notified OEMs that all related equipment sent to the fab site will include the IntelliFlow DFC and that all 200-mm tools at several other fabs will be upgraded to receive the DFC. Mykrolis is the former microelectronics division of Millipore. The company has worked with the "blue-chip customer" for the past four and a half years, it says.

SEZ bags new client

The SEZ Group has expanded its presence in the Asia-Pacific region with its first order from a new Taiwanese customer. Described as one of Taiwan's largest DRAM manufacturers, the client purchased a Spin-Processor 323 for its 300-mm fab. The system has two four-level chambers using three chemistries for single-sided wafer processing. The platform accommodates backside, bevel, edge, and front exclusion zone copper decontamination as well as preclean for advanced lithography, according to the Austria-based tool manufacturer. The fab will take delivery of the system in the first half of 2002.