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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gottfried who wrote (27918)	1/29/1999 3:19:00 PM
From: Jeffrey D	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Gottfried:<<Is Bloomberg known for selective repetition of old news?>> Good question and one of many questions I have no answer for. Now, for those of you that get bored with information on analyst upgrades for AMAT and information on AMAT easily surpassing its 52 week high so far today, how about the following newswire. Below is an article about the "excitement" of the expected rise of the dielectric materials market. What I get out of it is either low k dielectrics is needed to work with new copper technology or low k is a direct competitor to copper. Would any of our thread techno-gurus please see fit to clarify this for me? Thanks, Jeff Story Filed: Thursday, January 28, 1999 05:45 PM EST Dielectric Materials Market LITTLE FALLS, N.J., Jan. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- The current global market for dielectric raw materials for semiconductor manufacturing is approximately $250 million and is growing at 20% a year, according to Kline & Company, Inc., a business consulting firm based in Little Falls, NJ. These materials -- typically silicon dioxide deposited by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and spin-on technology, in thicknesses from only a few hundred angstroms to 10,000 angstroms -- are undergoing a dramatic change in material requirements. According to Michael Corbett, project manager for Kline's new study titled THE GLOBAL OUTLOOK FOR DIELECTRIC MATERIALS IN SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICES, 1999-2004, "As semiconductor device feature sizes continue to shrink to subquarter micron levels and below, fabricators are forced to rethink their choices for dielectrics. As metal lines shrink, their cross-sectional area decreases and resistivity rises. The use of copper in place of aluminum helps to overcome some of the increase in resistivity, but there is also an increase in time delay. Fabricators will have to deal with this problem by adopting low-k dielectrics." The k-values of conventional silicon dioxide and five classes of low-k dielectrics are listed below: Material K-value CONVENTIONAL SiO2 ~4.0 FLUORINATED SILICATE GLASS 3.2 - 3.6 SPIN-ONS - CURRENT TECHNOLOGY Polyimides 3.0 - 3.5 Fluorinated polyimides 2.5 - 3.3 Hybrids/composites 2.8 - 3.0 Siloxane 2.7 - 2.9 SPIN-ONS - DEVELOPING TECHNOLOGY Organic polymers 2.3 - 2.7 CVD - DEVELOPING TECHNOLOGY Doped oxide 2.4 - 2.8 Parylene 2.2 - 2.6 SUB-2.0K SPIN-ONS PTFE <2.0 Nanoporous silica <2.0 SOURCE: C. Case, Lucent Technologies, Semicon West '98. Low-k technology that can cut the dielectric factor in half is currently in development. This should be sufficient to ensure the progression of design-rule goals well into the next decade. Qualification of devices using dielectrics rated at 2.5k or lower is expected to begin as soon as the year 2000. The total global market for dielectric materials is predicted to grow to approximately $600 million over the next five years. According to Corbett, "Low-k spin-on and CVD materials currently represent only a fraction of the market, but will easily capture 10% within the next few years. The transition to low-k materials is inevitable, due to the semiconductor needs that are already in planning." Several companies are positioning themselves to become leaders in this technology. For example, AlliedSignal announced in December 1998 that it was investing more than $30 million in a low-k dielectric facility in Sunnyvale, CA. Other companies developing low-k materials include BF Goodrich, Dow Chemical, Schumacher, Hitachi, Trikon, and W.L. Gore. Established in 1959, Kline & Company, Inc. is a leading business research firm serving the electronics, specialty chemical, and materials industries worldwide. Over the last ten years, Kline has completed more than 50 projects related to electronic materials and technologies, focusing on both market opportunities and future materials needs. Kline's new study titled THE GLOBAL OUTLOOK FOR DIELECTRIC MATERIALS IN SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICES, 1999-2004 is due to be published in the third quarter of 1999. For information on how to subscribe, contact Michael Corbett directly at Kline & Company, Inc., Overlook at Great Notch, 150 Clove Road, Little Falls, NJ 07424, 973-435-3457, or via e-mail at Mike--Corbett@klinegroup.com.