Equipment suppliers join in sub-45nm research

IMEC has signed strategic partnership agreements with ten of the world's leading equipment suppliers to structure its sub-45nm research around the most advanced equipment available.

IMEC has signed strategic partnership agreements with ten of the world's leading equipment suppliers - Aixtron, Applied Materials, ASM International, ASM-Lithography, Dainippon Screen, FEI Company, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research Corp, Tokyo Electron and SEZ.

The agreements allow IMEC to structure its sub-45nm research around the most advanced equipment available, while tool suppliers can acquire early knowhow on future technology generations and closely collaborate with leading semiconductor manufacturers.

IC process research targeting technology generations two to three nodes ahead of state-of-the-art IC production requires close collaboration between research centres, semiconductor manufacturers, material suppliers and equipment manufacturers.

At the inauguration of IMEC's nanoelectronics research facility last May, IMEC announced that seven of the world's leading semiconductor manufacturers - Infineon Technologies, Intel, Matsushita, Philips, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments - had joined IMEC's sub-45nm research programmes as core partners.

Now agreements are in place with ten leading equipment suppliers to provide the world's most advanced equipment and closely collaborate in IMEC's sub-45nm research programmes.

The agreements allow IMEC to build its sub-45nm CMOS research programs around a mixture of early research tools (beta tools) and tools providing solid baseline processes.

IMEC's sub-45nm research currently includes seven programmes: 193nm immersion lithography and EUV lithography; cleaning and contamination control; substrate modules - implementation of high-mobility layers and advanced source/drain engineering solutions; gate stack - high-k dielectrics and metal gates; emerging devices (eg FinFET, FDSOI); germanium-based devices; and advanced interconnect solutions - ultra-low-k materials and wafer-level packaging.

IMEC's alliances with several of the equipment suppliers result from successful collaborations that started already many years ago with research on 200mm wafers and even before.

The new agreements are a first step towards long-term partnerships making it a win-win situation for both IMEC's semiconductor manufacturer partners and tool suppliers.

The equipment suppliers expect to station about 80 researchers at IMEC's facilities.

"Scaling IC technology below 45nm poses increasing challenges for the equipment industry and creates the need for tool suppliers to acquire early know-how on future process modules and devices", said Luc Van den Hove, Vice President Silicon Process and Device Technology at IMEC.

"These joint development agreements allow tool suppliers to closely interact with leading semiconductor manufacturers, enabling them to adopt to the most promising process steps and device concepts in an early stage and build up the critical knowledge to support these processes".

"Tool suppliers also gain access to IMEC's unique characterisation and metrology knowhow, which is crucial for advanced process and tool development".

Back to top