Online information source for semiconductor professionals

Product Briefing Outline: W. L. Gore & Associates has announced an addition to their line of high-performance cartridge filters for semiconductor applications. The new 40nm-rated filter, intended for use with chemicals in wet processes and distribution systems, provides 40nm retention while maintaining the flow of next-best-in-class 50nm filters. Incorporating a new high-flow ePTFE (expanded polytetrafluoroethylene) filtration media that allows a drop-in retention upgrade from 100nm to 30nm, enables cleaner recirculation baths, reduced processing times and significant savings in cost of ownership. Read more >>

Product Briefing Outline: Dow Electronic Materials has introduced the Optivision 4540 CMP Polishing Pad designed to deliver low defectivity and low cost of ownership (CoO) over the pad lifetime. The new pad is formulated with a unique, surfactant-free, polymer chemistry and pore structure to help minimize defectivity and provide higher dielectric film rates in copper barrier polishing. The pad has a dual pore structure that accurately controls polishing while providing a consistent polishing surface over the life of the pad. Read more >>

Product Briefing Outline: The NBlend system from Norcimbus, offers a new option for mixed gases, bringing to market unique gas mixing technology that combines a MFC mixing system, surge tank, concentration analyzer and a proprietary Power Purge V controller. It is designed to mix two gasses to an adjustable ratio and supply a variable flow up to 250 standard liters per minute (slpm) continuously, while the concentration analyzer monitors and adjusts the blend ratio to maintain the concentration set point. It provides control accuracy of plus or minus 0.3 percent of the requested ratio, allowing it to deliver consistent results with varying flow rates and adjustable blend ratios. Read more >>

Product Briefing Outline: Soitec has introduced a new generation of advanced substrates that support all the applications and architectures on the industry’s sub-45 nm roadmap. New solutions such as ultra-thin top silicon and ultra-thin Buried OXide (BOX) give device architects and designers complete flexibility in their choice of substrates for partially depleted (PD) and fully-depleted (FD) devices, including multi-gate transistor architectures (FinFET, Trigate). Read more >>

One of the equipment suppliers that consistently brings out new products is KLA-Tencor. However, the metrology supplier rarely figures in the most popular rankings in any given year. That has changed in 2008 with its TeraFab tool. Although only released recently, the fifth most popular product was from TEL and Novellus for copper interconnects. Read more >>

Product Briefing Outline: Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials have said that its novel defect reduction and slurry reduction groove designs for CMP pads have already been adopted in high volume manufacturing (HVM) by customers in Europe, Korea, North America and Taiwan. While currently being used on the Rohm and Haas IC1000 AT CMP pad for the 90nm process node and below, multiple customers are now also testing the defect reduction groove on the ‘VisionPad’ line of CMP pads. Read more >>

Product Briefing Outline: Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials have introduced the ‘ACuPLANE’ Copper (Cu) Barrier CMP Solution for advanced Cu/low-k interconnect applications. The ACuPLANE system combines Rohm and Haas’s ‘EcoVision’ 4000 CMP Pad and ACuPLANE 5000 Series slurries to deliver a tunable CMP system that meets the stringent requirements of advanced process nodes. Read more >>

Product Briefing Outline: SAFC Hitech has made significant progress in developing Germanium Antimony Telluride (GexSbyTez or GST) precursors for use in high volume manufacturing phase change memory (PCM) applications. Extensive development work has been conducted with both the precursors and with the use of conventional Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) techniques to deposit them, resulting in the successful deposition of device-quality GST. Read more >>

Product Briefing Outline: Air Products and Chemicals has introduced its new ‘XeCovery’ on-site xenon recovery service for the semiconductor and MEMS industries. Xenon has a number of unique properties that have attracted a variety of industries to use this atom, including semiconductor manufacturing. With demand and prices on the rise, there is a growing concern that cost will hamper its applicability. Air Products uses its patented Vacuum Swing Adsorption (VSA) technology as a means for recovering xenon from effluent gas streams. Read more >>

Product Briefing Outline: Matheson Tri-Gas Electronics has introduced its patented ‘PICO-TRAP’ Ultra-Purification System for removing volatile metal impurities and moisture from critical process gases used by semiconductor manufacturers. The PICO-TRAP System combines the principles of chemisorption and physisorption to achieve higher levels of process gas purity than by conventional purification technologies, according to the company. Read more >>