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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John F. Dowd who wrote (167229)	6/29/2002 9:36:51 AM
From: semiconeng	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Duke: Have you seen this? newsfactor.com JFD My $0.02.... LADI involves pressing a quartz mold, which contains the raised features the maker wants imprinted on the chip, against the silicon slab and blasting it with a laser pulse for a very short time -- about 20 billionths of a second. The result is that the silicon surface melts but quickly resolidifies around the mold, leaving a permanent shape. ---This is the crux of the Process. I think that this would be a good way to imprint features that are "cut" into the silicon, like "Isolation Trench" for example, but I'm not sure that I see how it will be used to create "raised features", like Poly, for example. And what happens to the displaced material? Etching removes the unwanted material, this seems to "Melt" the silicon. Is the melted silicon vaporized?? Pushed aside? What? It doesn't seem like it would just disappear. I'd like to see some cross sections of these "Imprints". My guess is that you'd end up with some raised material along the edges of the trenches, that would need to be planerized flat. You don't currently need to planerize every layer, so would this mean extra process steps?? The process is capable of imprinting features as small as 10 nanometers (10 millionths of a millimeter) in only a few seconds. It is also said to be as cheap as 50 U.S. cents per chip for an area of 100 square centimeters. --This is a big thing. Even if you take into account the cheapest processes available today, this would be AT LEAST 1/4 the cost. Depending on how many layers you could use it for, You could see top of the line server chips for Half the price you see today. With the smaller line widths, and the power savings that would no doubt come, Can you say "IA-64 Laptop"? It seems like this is something that should continue development, but I don't think that it will be ready for Prime Time, anytime soon. Looks good for down the road though..... :-) Semi