News in brief: Bookham, Aixtron, Cascade
Bookham Technology is to open an advanced manufacturing facility in Shenzhen, China. The factory covers 250,000 square feet, including cleanroom facilities, and will be a key assembly and test facility for the company. The first products to be manufactured will be transmitter optical assemblies (TOAs) and receiver optical assemblies (ROAs), simple amplifiers, connectors and fiber assembly. The factory in Shenzhen was obtained through Bookham s recent acquisition of New Focus, which was completed on March 8.
"Bookham has already demonstrated its ability to relocate product and processes around the world. We have successfully relocated an indium phosphide wafer fab from Ottawa, Canada, to Caswell, UK, during 2003, six months ahead of schedule, with no impact to our growing customer base," said Liam Nagle, Bookham’s president and COO. "We have a track record of managing change successfully and we will use the same processes and management focus to create and transition the products to Shenzhen, in a similar way to that which we have done over the last two years."
Siak Chiew (SC) Lim has already been appointed as VP of Asia Pacific Operations and is responsible for leading the manufacturing start-up in Shenzhen. Prior to joining Bookham, Mr Lim spent 20 years at Intel.
Aixtron joins IMEC s high-k/metal gate program
Aixtron is to install a 200/300 mm multi-chamber Tricent platform at the Belgian research organization IMEC. The system will be used for atomic vapor deposition (AVD) of high-k and metal gate stacks as part of IMEC’s development program for sub-45 nm CMOS process technologies.
The Tricent platform will have modules for the deposition of gate dielectrics such as HfSixOy, and for the deposition of metal electrode materials such as Ru, TiN and Ta(Si)N.
Aixtron and IMEC have entered into a 3-year program that will seek to implement multi-component high-k dielectrics with polysilicon/fully-silicided gate electrodes, and develop alternative multi-component metal oxides with higher k values (k ~ 25-50) for future scaling needs.
The program will also develop optimized metal layers for implementation as dual or single metal gates in aggressively scaled devices, explore the limits of scaling planar CMOS devices with metal electrodes, and deposit advanced high-k/metal gate stacks on germanium substrates.
Cascade Microtech files IPO registration statement
Cascade Microtech, which designs, develops and manufactures advanced wafer probing solutions for the electrical measurement and test of ICs, has filed a registration statement for the proposed initial public offering (IPO) of its common stock with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US.
