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Speaking of carbon nanotubes, Nantero says its CNTs are used routinely in the fab |
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Nov 03, 2006 at 11:45 AM |
As noted in the previous post, there has been significant progress on making carbon nanotubes (CNTs) more manufacturable in the advanced chipmaking and related nanoelectronics areas.
If we are to believe the news from one company, the work is much farther along than most nanopundits would have us believe.
The headline of Nantero's Nov. 1 announcement trumpets the "routine use of nanotubes in production CMOS fabs." The release goes on to say that Nantero is "the first company in the world to introduce and use CNTs in mass production semiconductor fabs" and that it "has resolved all of the major obstacles that had been preventing carbon nanotubes from being used in mass production in semiconductor fabs."
That's right, all of the "major obstacles." Nantero claims it can "position [CNTs] reliably" across the wafer and has solved the issue of contaminants found in CNTs that made the material "incompatible" with fabs. Here's the wording from the press release:
"Nantero has developed a method for positioning carbon nanotubes reliably on a large scale by treating them as a fabric which can be deposited using methods such as spincoating, and then patterned using lithography and etching, all common CMOS processes present in every semiconductor fab. Nantero has been issued patents on all the steps in the process, as well as on the article of the carbon nanotube fabric itself....Nantero has also developed a method for purifying carbon nanotubes to the standards required for use in a production semiconductor fab, which means consistently containing less than 25 ppb of any metal contamination."
The company had said earlier this year that it was working with ON Semiconductor on integrating CNTs in the chipmaker's devices, so there is at least one publicly acknowledged partner company.
Given the level of hype found in the Nantero news, the company's boasts trigger my journalistic and technological skepticism. I'm looking forward to digging deeper and finding out how well the company can back up its claims. As any engineer worth his/her salt might say, "show me the data!" If you have any comments on Nantero or the production worthiness of CNTs in general, please pass them along.
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