Ultra-pure steam can improve the ultimate efficiency of PV cells by removing contaminants, as quantified by Fraunhofer ISE using Rasirc Steamer sub-systems.

For 32nm and 22nm node ICs, Applied Materials’ FCVD and Novellus Systems’ CFD technologies provide gapfill, sidewall spacers, and conformal oxides for logic and NAND, plus SSDP litho.

ALD/CVD systems for new materials R&D by Altatech Semiconductor sold to Fraunhofer IZM ASSID and ENAS for 3DIC and high mobility research using liquid injection of precursors.

The control of complex interdependencies is critical for the successful manufacturing of nanometer-scale ICs. Every aspect of every unit process step in the line must be ever more tightly controlled to ensure that 45nm and 32nm node chips can be made with good yield. To serve the market, Novellus continues to announce new integrated surface-treatment […]

German and French teams are combining EUR 14.5m investment into development of strained-silicon on insulator (sSOI) technology under the DEvice and CIrcuit performance boosted through SIlicon material Fabrication (DECISIF) program. The work will combine original research results from Research Center Juelich and Leti/Soitec to try to lower costs and defect-densities in the creation of 300mm […]

Novellus’ applications labs have been working on CVD low-k dielectrics targeting 32nm node multilevel metal specs, and the result is “dense” ultra-low-k (ULK) film with bulk k=2.5 and the potential to go lower. Combined with the company’s multi-station sequential processing (MSSP) tool architecture for the barrier/cap depositions and UV/thermal cure steps, the result is a […]

JSR announced today that it has entered into several joint development partnerships (JDP) with IBM to develop low-k dielectrics for 32nm and 22nm nodes of semiconductor technology. The companies will work on next generation materials JSR has had in development and commercial production, including low-k dielectrics and a broad range of photoresists. “This larger scale […]

Aixtron and Ovonyx announced a JDP for Atomic Vapor Deposition (AVD®) process technology to push scaling of next-generation phase change memory (PCM) products. Since it is expected to replace current high-density memory, PCM cells must be made dense and so companies like Samsung (Ref: BetaSights Newsletter 0001) and Numonyx require CVD-like processes for gap-fill instead […]

Researchers from Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) in Korea have found that large graphene films can be formed using CVD over a Ni thin film. The graphene is both strong and stretchy, and at low temperatures the monolayers transferred to SiO2 substrates show electron mobility >3,700 cm2/Vs implying that the quality is as high as mechanically-cleaved graphene. […]