INDUSTRY NEWS

'ROUND THE CIRCUIT

Disk group finds focus

The disk-drive industry should focus its first-ever standardized cleanliness and corrosion tests on drive components, an industry task force concluded at its inaugural meeting. The group, which is sponsored by the International Disk Equipment and Materials Association (IDEMA), decided that the industry should concentrate on testing components rather than complete disk drives, because drive manufacturers take a "proprietary" interest in testing their own assembled drives. Standardized component testing will also keep vendors' costs low and ensure more consistent work by both the vendors and the laboratories involved, the task force decided.

In other business, the task force proposed that standardized testing cover four main contamination categories: environmental/corrosion, ionics, organics, and particulates. Environmental/corrosion tests should focus on identifying gross corrosion and adhesion problems of components, speeding up corrosion reactions, and ensuring that components with more than one material coming into contact with another do not degrade at specific temperature and relative humidity levels.

Among the 16 attendees at the November meeting in Santa Clara, CA, were two consultants and representatives from Seagate, Western Digital, IBM, Read-Rite, Quantum, Balazs Analytical Laboratory, and TeraStor. The mission of the task force is to standardize the disk-drive industry's basic cleanliness and corrosion tests. It is one of three contamination subcommittees established by IDEMA, which is directing the overall effort to write the industry's first microcontamination standards.

At its second meeting, on December 10, the subcommittee on test methodologies raised several questions about conditions for testing drive components in the range of 80° to 85°C. Participants expressed concern that:

• Parts such as pressure-sensitive adhesives could not withstand these temperatures; thus failures would not be similar to those actually occurring at the drive level.

• Low temperature and high relative humidity may cause failures with pollutants such as Cl and SO₄.

Volunteers may telephone IDEMA's Suzanne Wynn at 408/720-9352 or main committee chairman Don Rice at 805/682-6229 for more information.

Partners seek litho advance

IMEC and ASM Lithography (ASML) are working together to develop a deep-UV lithography process able to produce ICs with linewidths down to 0.13 µm. Working at IMEC's Class 1 cleanroom in Leuven, Belgium, the vendor and the R&D center are using one of the first 193-nm scanning lithography systems built by ASML. The system will be based on 248-nm scanners being developed at ASML's headquarters in Veldhoven, the Netherlands. A production-ready 193-nm tool is scheduled for introduction in 1998. IMEC and ASML are inviting interested chipmakers to participate in the program and share R&D costs. The technology will enable the industry to achieve the resolution needed to manufacture such devices as 4-Gb DRAMs.

Initiative uses FSI tool

The International 300-mm Initiative, or I300I, will use the Mercury surface conditioning system from FSI International as part of the effort to develop process technology for 300-mm wafers. The system has been shipped to the I300I Process Support and Metrology Center in Austin, TX. The partners in the initiative include Sematech, SEMI, and equipment providers. The tool processes wafers using a controlled sequence of chemicals in a nitrogen-purged chamber. The chamber rinse prevents the accumulation of contaminants caused by chemicals and reaction by-products.

Lam licenses TI software

Lam Research has licensed a software program from Texas Instruments that will speed development of the control systems needed to operate Lam's future line of 300-mm etch and CVD tools, the vendor says. TI's ControlWorks is an object-oriented program that establishes a set of software standards that are designed to improve equipment utilization. The chipmaker developed the software for its Microelectronics Manufacturing Science and Technology program, and it has been used in TI's most advanced fabs. More than 20 tool vendors have licensed ControlWorks and related process control and fault-detection programs, Lam says. The vendor's decision to incorporate this type of generic program in its next-generation equipment will enable semiconductor manufacturers to customize controls for each process in the fab, says George Canavan, Lam's vice president of corporate marketing. This capability will lead to reduced cycle times and lower cost of ownership, he asserts.

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