INDUSTRY NEWS

Chartered ramps 300-mm fab

The world's third-largest chipmaking foundry is ramping its first 300-mm facility. Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing celebrated the initial move-in of equipment to Fab 7 on the company's Singapore Woodlands campus in late March. The company says engineering wafer starts will begin in 3Q2004, with pilot production expected by year's end. The factory design is based on "equipment smart" compatibility with IBM's East Fishkill, NY, fab, leveraging joint-technology development and reciprocal manufacturing agreements between the two companies.

Based on their history of collaboration, Chartered and IBM have also formed what they're calling the industry's first "cross-foundry design enablement program." The companies will combine their respective expertise into a joint program starting at 90 nm, offering design technology and service providers capabilities that have been prequalified on a common process platform for that node. As part of the program, Artisan and Virage Logic have already signed on for shared design library support.

Several process equipment manufacturers have benefited from the Fab 7 ramp. Applied Materials says it has received orders for a wide range of tooling for both 130- and 90-nm devices, including CMP, PVD, CVD, DPN, and RTP platforms, as well as a variety of its metrology and defect analyses systems. Novellus also scored business from the Chartered facility, citing electrofill and PVD tools to be employed for copper metallization applications. Axcelis will be shipping units to the Singaporean foundry, as the ion implantation supplier garnered orders for both its 300-mm high-energy and low-energy, high-current tools. Dutch lithography provider ASML will send several i-line, KrF, and ArF systems to the new Chartered fab; it also licensed its MaskTools unit's Scattering Bar intellectual property to the chipmaker.

Fujitsu, NEC to build 300 mm

Two leading Japanese semiconductor manufacturers plan to build new 300-mm fabs. Fujitsu will eventually invest about $1.5 billion in its facility, which will be constructed on the company's Mie prefecture campus in central Japan. It expects to start 90-nm pilot production chips by April 2005, with volume production coming on line in September 2005. When fully equipped, Fujitsu says the new fab will have a maximum production capacity of 13,000 wafers per month.

NEC Electronics will build its new factory adjacent to another 300-mm site already under construction on the Tsuruoka City campus of its wholly owned chipmaking subsidiary, NEC Yamagata. Once fully operational, capacity of the 11,500-square-meter manufacturing facility will reach 10,000 wafer starts per month. NEC says it will start construction in May and complete the project by December of this year.

Sony, Samsung join LCD forces

Sony and Samsung have signed a joint production alliance for advanced TFT-LCD products. The companies say that the venture, called S-LCD Corp., will set up a fab line for seventh-generation amorphous-silicon TFT products at Samsung's Chung Cheong Nam-Do facility now under construction in South Korea. Capital equipment investments should reach about $2 billion, with the expenditures starting in summer 2004. Volume production is set to begin in 2Q2005, with capacity expected to reach 60,000 motherglass panels per month. Samsung, which owns 50% of the company plus one share, will name the president and CEO, while Sony will choose the CFO. Each company also will appoint three additional board members, and representatives from both corporations will join engineering meetings to evaluate product quality.

IMT builds gas sensors

MEMS developer Ion Optics has teamed with Innovative Micro Technology, a manufacturing services provider specializing in microelectromechanical devices. IMT will take Ion Optics' silicon-micromachined infrared gas sensors, known as SensorChips, from the prototype stage to volume production. The wavelength-tuned microdevices have carbon dioxide and combustible gas–sensing uses in medical devices, industrial safety, military, homeland defense, process monitoring, and automotive applications. The work will take place at IMT's 150-mm submicron manufacturing facility in Santa Barbara, CA