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Technology Stocks : General Lithography -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Volsi Mimir who wrote (887)	3/12/1998 8:47:00 AM
From: Katherine Derbyshire	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1305

>>These materials that are researched and trickier , Are they new to R&D or ,like copper to aluminum lines in chips that IBM said they finally developed, been in these companies pipeline and new techniques are providing breakthroughs?<< It's not really an either or question, because the pipeline starts all the way back in the most basic science-oriented university labs, and extends, with many twists and turns, all the way to current fabrication lines. In the case of gate dielectrics specifically, there are known materials with the desired properties. However, these materials are complex oxides like BST (BaSrTiO3), not simple elements like copper, so actually implementing them in production will be much harder than implementing copper (and Cu was very very difficult, even though it looks easy now that people have done it). There are also stopgap solutions, like nitrided SiO2, to fill the gap between now and when BST is ready. (Technical aside: gate dielectrics, and DRAM capacitors, need high storage capacity, so they need high dielectric constant (k) materials. Interlayer dielectrics need to prevent crosstalk between lines and cut circuit delays, so they need low dielectric constant materials. The k of SiO2 is about 4, air is 1, BST is substantially higher than 4, but I forget the exact number.) Interlayer dielectrics are another story. Most of the materials being considered are polymer films or gels, which fall into a category that materials geeks like myself call "engineered materials." I'm not an organic chemist, so I won't say polymers are even harder to implement than BST, but polymers do present a completely different set of processing challenges, and the requirements are even less familiar to the semiconductor industry than the requirements of BST. (AV, feel free to contradict me on any of this. I suspect you're much closer to the front lines than I am.) So the short answer is yes, the materials are in the pipeline, but "new techniques providing breakthroughs" assumes a whole lot of R&D effort that hasn't yet happened. >>Is editor at Semiconductor Online(SO)a new job for you there? may I ask Whats your background? Did you change the format a little? I don't remember Rueters and PR on?<< Semiconductor Online is a Vertical Net, Inc. site, completely independent of Solid State Technology, a Pennwell publication. So yes, SCOL is a new job and new company for me. The SCOL site was redesigned about a week ago. All the same features are there, but the format is much cleaner and easier to read. Reuters, PRNewswire, and BusinessWire aren't new, but they may be more visible. My background is in materials science and engineering, both electronic materials and metals, with published research on high temperature superconductors, Mayan bronzes, and diamond thin films. Katherine