SAFC Hitech reveals advanced metalorganics plan
SAFC Hitech, the semiconductor-focused division of the chemicals company Sigma-Aldrich, has issued its own five-year chemical roadmap for the development and manufacture of advanced silicon devices.
Created through the acquisition of the UK firm Epichem in February 2007, and the subsequent addition of SAFC s existing semiconductor materials operations, SAFC Hitech sees the silicon market as a key new business area for suppliers of metalorganics - materials widely used as precursors in III-V epitaxy - to exploit.
That's because leading silicon device makers including Intel, Texas Instruments and IBM are having to utilise more "exotic" materials in their chips in order to overcome some fundamental limitations with silicon and silicon dioxide.
These exotic materials include rare metals such as hafnium and zirconium, which allow fabrication of dielectric layers with smaller dimensions than is possible with the conventional material system.
Barry Leese, Epichem s co-founder and now the president of SAFC Hitech, said, "As the silicon industry moves from the 65 nm node through 45 nm, 32 nm and beyond, demands placed on the electrophysics of the silicon device require the development of new enabling chemistries."
"We believe that the semiconductor market is entering an age of chemistry . As our roadmap indicates, SAFC Hitech is positioning itself at the forefront of this materials development, with a number of advanced materials in production."
That roadmap details the likely timing of pilot-plant production, and full volume capacity of a number of precursors for applications in next-generation CMOS, dynamic RAM and Flash memory manufacturing.
Already in full production are hafnium precursors that are used to form high-k dielectric layers through atomic layer deposition. Zirconium precursors are at the pilot production stage, with many others set to follow between now and 2010, as demand for materials with even higher "k" values kicks in.
Applications in new types of device also beckon, for example phase-change and magnetic memories. SAFC Hitech expects the CVD approach to be useful for metal wire deposition, with pilot production slated to begin towards 2009.
The company s director of research and development, Peter Heys, adds that even more exotic chemistries based on lanthanide elements and strontium may find use in the more distant future.
• The forthcoming August issue of Compound Semiconductor magazine features an interview with SAFC Hitech s Barry Leese and Geoff Irvine on the topics of precursor chemistries for advanced silicon manufacturing, and the convergence between silicon and III-V device fabrication techniques.
