INDUSTRY NEWS

A capital idea

Already looking at a price tag of $1 billion or more for each new fab, the semiconductor industry welcomes any chance to lower manufacturing costs. Engineers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, CA, and AlliedSignal Federal Manufacturing and Technologies in Kansas City, MO, believe they may have some good news for the industry in the form of an insulator that received an award from R&D magazine as one of the top 100 industrial inventions of 1996.

Called the ultra-high-gradient insulator, or UHGI, the device may enable equipment suppliers to reduce both the capital and operating costs of tools. Developed for use with a new linear accelerator, the insulator has extremely thin layers of conducting material between alternating layers of insulating materials. The device sustains electrical voltages at a rate approximately four times better than current insulators. For example, a UHGI using polycarbonate as an insulating material supports 200,000 V for each centimeter of material. Plastic insulators fail at 50,000 V, according to Steve Sampayan, an LLNL electronics engineer.

Because the UHGI handles approximately four times the electrical voltage of standard insulators, the size of insulators could be shrunk by a factor of four as well. This diminution could lead to tool advances such as the one LLNL is exploring now: a table-top x-ray lithography machine.

MicroHome | Search | Current Issue | MicroArchives
Buyers Guide | Media Kit