Shipley opens tech center

Touted as a "focal point of integrated materials development," Shipley opened its new advanced technology center on its Marlborough, MA, campus in early February. The 65,000-sq-ft facility has 1500 sq ft of Class 1 cleanroom space, with an additional 4000 sq ft of "prepared slab ready for rapid buildout," according to Leo Linehan, Shipley Microelectronics' director of R&D and manager of the ATC's research staff and daily operations. "If you look at the building from behind, it looks just like a wafer fab in Hsinchu," says Linehan. "Adjacent to that, we have a 4000-sq-ft low-vibration, low-sound-interference metrology suite, with 15 bays," equipped with FIBs, AFMs, and other off-line tools.

The heart of the cleanroom portion of the facility is shown above, with the installed lithography equipment cell made up of an ASML /1100 series 193-nm scanner and TEL ACT 8 photoresist track system. "The linkage to the end-user is our ability to use the same toolset that they're using," he explains. "We have customers come in because our equipment is the same equipment that they use...who want to use our equipment because theirs is dedicated to production." What Linehan calls ATC's "heavy focus" is in "developing manufacturable, robust 193-nm processes."

Collaborations and partnerships with the likes of ASML, TEL, Therma-Wave, and others are critical in areas such as ultrathin resist technology and nondestructive metrology systems, says Linehan, adding that there is ongoing work with sister company Rodel, especially in copper electroplating and removal approaches. Another "key aspect to our technology development efforts is partnering and taking advantage of university activities as well as the research consortia," the R&D director notes. Shipley has relationships with MIT, Cornell, and the University of Texas at Austin (which contributed a valuable resist-dissolution modeling tool) along with continuing relationships with IMEC, LETI, and International Sematech.

The center also has a "significant (materials) development thrust in 157 nm," says Linehan, although he cautions that "the equipment situation in 157 is a little bit murky." As for the years ahead, he points out that "the facility itself was built for future growth...and is designed to take on virtually any tool that a customer might have."