News Article
TEGAL announces bid deadline for nanolayer deposition patent portfolio
Major IC and semiconductor equipment manufacturers express interest in the IP portfolio
Tegal Corporation has announced that bids for the company’s intellectual property portfolio for Nanolayer Deposition Technology (NLD™) will be accepted until 5 p.m. PDT on September 30, 2011. Tegal established the bid deadline after several major IC and semiconductor equipment manufacturers expressed interest in the IP portfolio. The deadline is subject to being extended or withdrawn.
NLD™ is a process technology that bridges the gap between high throughput, non-conformal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and highly conformal, low throughput atomic layer deposition (ALD). The portfolio includes over 35 US and international patents in the areas of pulsed-CVD, plasma-enhanced ALD, and NLD™.
“Advanced chip designs often require increased process flexibility over the current deposition technologies to achieve performance goals and to maintain broad process windows,” said Robert Ditizio, Chief Technologist for Tegal Corporation. “Tegal’s NLD™ portfolio provides a number of options for extending the life of conventional CVD process hardware without the need to move completely to lower-throughput ALD processes.”
The accompanying figure shows the conformality of thin films versus the deposition rate for a range of thin film deposition technologies used in semiconductor device fabrication. NLD™ and pulsed-CVD processes have been developed to fill the gap that was created as IC manufacturers moved from conventional CVD to ALD. Although ALD has proven an effective process technology for applications requiring highly conformal film deposition, the conformality has come at the expense of throughput
