INDUSTRY NEWS

Having a ball

Ball Semiconductor is on a roll. The Allen, TX­based start-up announced last month that it has built "the world's first spherical semiconductor," a 5-µm NMOS device on a 1-mm sphere. The breakthrough, says Ball, is the result of 18 months of "intense" R&D. Ball believes it can drastically reduce semiconductor-manufacturing costs by producing chips in hermetically sealed tubes instead of cleanrooms, thus reducing process time to days instead of months.

Ball decided to make an NMOS chip as its first rollout because the simple design uses "all the fundamental technologies" required for manufacturing most spherical semiconductors. The fabrication process involves spherical single crystallization, spherical silicon surface polishing, and spherical lithography with alignment of balls. Processing also entails circuit design on the sphere with mask data generation, spherical resist coating, and atmospheric chemical vapor deposition.

Ball's next move is to develop a pilot line to test the mass-production worthiness of the NMOS spherical chips before it makes the transition to producing CMOS ICs, radio-frequency devices, and MEMS. The three-year-old chipmaker has set its sights on selling products next year after completing R&D in 1999. Both the healthcare and automotive industries could take advantage "of the smallness and roundness of the Ball products, which will be combined with integrated circuits and sensors," asserts Akira Ishikawa, the company's president, chairman, and CEO.

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