SiGen Marches Forward
electronicnews.com
SiGen's NanoCleave process is a proprietary, implantation technology that it uses to cleave or separate the donor wafer from the device wafer along a plane that follows the atomic structure of the silicon. The company maintains that this results in a surface roughness that ranges between 4 and 8 Angstroms - less than 1 nanometer, according to SiGen. It is a significant step above typical hydrogen-induced thermal cleaving, which leaves a roughness of about 80 Angstroms, and in turn requires some sort of polishing or chemical etching.
However, they may hit a brick wall:
SOITEC registers a complaint against Silicon Genesis Corp. for infringement
BERNIN, France, April 16, 1999.
Today, SOITEC announced that it has filed a complaint with the United States District Court, for the District of Massachussetts, against the American company Silicon Genesis Corporation, for a patent infringement. SOITEC alleges that Silicon Genesis has infringed the US patent Nº 5.374.564 protecting the Smart Cut® process, for which SOITEC holds the exclusive world-wide license for all silicon applications. SOITEC seeks an injunction damages and interest, as well as the reimbursement of legal expenses.
{SOITEC USA is located in Massachusetts}
soitec.com
The scope of SOITEC's Smart Cut® license from LETI is stated here. The assignee appearing on the patents is LETI's parent organization, Commissariat À l'Énergie Atomique.
The Berkeley patent (US6027988) mentioned in the Electronic News article covers use of a particular implantation technique, plasma immersion ion implantation ("PIII"), which is claimed to have significant cost advantages over conventional beam line ion implantation. Over the last six months, SiGen has been awarded several U.S. patents related to 'their' Genesis Process™, the first of which was:
U.S. Patent #5,985,742 issued 11/16/99 to Henley and Cheung,
Controlled cleavage process and device for patterned films
patents.ibm.com
sigen.com
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