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Strategies & Market Trends : New US Economy Policy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Arthur Tang who wrote (86)	12/3/1997 10:37:00 AM
From: Arthur Tang	Respond to of 435

The new economy and the gettered oxides in silicon wafers? Silicon wafer manufacturers have been using oxygen gettering for many years. The concept is to control ions (less than 0.1% impurities in silicon) by making them high temperature oxides which are stable. The oxides are electrically inactive, so that the wafers appear to be very pure. This is fine, when the transistors are over 1 billion silicon atoms each. As the transistors are designed smaller and smaller, the number of silicon atoms are fewer. The number of metallic oxide atoms created by oxygen gettering will clog up the current path. So there will be a deminishing return as deeper and deeper submicron technology is used. Since there are no known methods to purify the silicon wafers further; the finite transister submicron technology is not 3 atoms, but many many more atoms for each transistor. Will this effect the new economy? Certainly as we discover the semiconductor industry is the base for our automation. Our automation is the base of our high standard of living. Our high standard of living is the base of our new economy. When we waste time to make semiconductor and the yield in manufacturing is not satisfactory, the economy will suffer from lack of profits. Lack of profits will mean layoffs. Layoffs will create lack of need for automation. No automation means inflation due to cost of products will go up. And we will get our recession if not depression.