INDUSTRY NEWS

300-MM IMPERATIVE

Moto, Siemens unveil venture

Motorola and Siemens have signed an agreement to develop 300-mm wafer manufacturing technology at Siemens' fab in Dresden, Germany. More than $595 million in R&D funds will be invested in the project by Schaumburg, IL—based Motorola, Munich—based Siemens, and the German government. The chipmakers will each contribute approximately $206 million to the project, dubbed Semiconductor300. The venture has the support of the German Federal Ministry of Education, Science, Research, and Technology, which is kicking in $111 million. Another $71 million is coming from the German state of Saxony. Additional investments of approximately $268 million will be made in the pilot line.

The line will be housed in 26,000 sq ft of space at the Siemens fab. Construction of the plant, which employs 2400 and features two large manufacturing modules, was completed in 1995. The chipmakers will use the pilot line to compare 300-mm processes with the existing 200-mm production line at the site in the hope of accelerating learning, reducing costs, and moving to volume production by 2000. Motorola and Siemens are already partners in White Oak Semiconductor, a joint venture located near Richmond, VA.

Canon tool takes next step

Following a successful test run, Canon USA's 300-mm DUV stepper has been accepted for use by the International 300-mm Initiative (I300I) and Intel. The FPA-300EX3L stepper exposed more than 1500 12-in. wafers without failure. A working tool like the EX3L gives process, materials, and equipment developers a head start in 300-mm wafer development by making 12-in. substrates available with actual device patterns, says Frank Robertson, vice president and general manager of Austin, TX—based I300I. Intel bought the machine under a one-year contract and will share data with I300I member companies. The microprocessor manufacturer will also develop its own exclusive processes on the stepper, which can print linewidths as small as 0.18 µm. Selete, the 300-mm consortium of Japanese and Korean IC manufacturers, has also installed the Canon stepper at its development facility.

I300I gets cleaning system

Fluoroware has loaned an HTC 8020 cleaning system to I300I to collect data during equipment demonstration runs. The tool will be installed in the Process Support and Metrology Center for one year. I300I, which is a Sematech subsidiary located in Austin, will share the tool with the research consortium. Sematech will use it to clean 200-mm material-handling products during the manufacture of chips with 0.18-µm linewidths. The HTC 8020 uses DI water and a surfactant-based process to clean carriers, shippers, chip trays, and related transport and storage items. Fluoroware will use the data generated at I300I to study particle contamination levels for its line of 300-mm products such as the front-opening unified pod.

SOI advance announced

Two international wafer suppliers have produced the first 300-mm wafers with a complete silicon-on-insulator structure. SOI-wafer manufacturer Soitec of Grenoble, France, and bulk silicon producer Shin-Etsu Handotai of Tokyo collaborated in making the Unibond SOI wafers. The two companies formed an alliance in 1997. They announced the breakthrough at Semicon Japan last December.

SOI wafers improve chip performance in low-power and low-voltage applications and provide additional benefits for system-on-chip manufacturing, points out André Auberton-Hervé, president of Soitec. The collaboration answered the question of whether 300-mm SOI wafers could be made "in the same time frame as 300-mm bulk silicon wafers," he says. The wafers were made using Soitec's Smart Cut bonding technique. The method uses hydrogen implantation to induce low-temperature splitting in the implant region, which permits the formation of the SOI structure at a low temperature. Applied Materials performed the implantation on one of the vendor's high-energy implanters, Soitec says. Gressi, an European R&D organization and Soitec partner, contributed to the breakthrough.

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