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Technology Stocks : Ultratech Stepper -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (3119)	4/3/1999 12:20:00 PM
From: Ian@SI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3696

Cary, Welcome back. 2 posts within 24 hours!!! Life on the "new" job must be treating you very well. At least, I hope that's the case. There's a couple different processes that PGILD supports. Unfortunately, I don't have a sufficient understanding of how chips are made to give a good description of the differences. My (mis?)understanding of the process is that impurities (dopants) are implanted into the chips to form transistors. Control is required to ensure the dopant only goes to those 3-dimensional parts of the wafer where the dopant is required. Traditionally, this could be achieved by a deposition step, a photolithography step, etch, some from of heat treatment with the dopant, stripping excess resist, CMP, various inspection and measurement steps, etc. PGILD permits single step doping. An excimer laser is used to heat those precise geographies where the dopant is required. This is done in a process chamber containing the required concentration of the dopant. Thus much wafer processing, movement, handling is removed. It could substantially lower the costs associated with making chips relative to the current processes, chemicals etc to achieve the same result. Perhaps, I'll head over to Almaden to read some more journals and improve my understanding of this stuff a little. Best wishes, Ian.