INDUSTRY NEWS

First 300-mm chips produced

Trecenti Technologies, a joint venture between Japan's Hitachi and Taiwan's United Microelectronics, has produced the first chips in its 300-mm fab--two months ahead of schedule. The company claims that it has used 0.18-µm technology to produce the world's first functional 4- and 8-Mb SRAMs in the 300-mm fab. With the completion of the pilot run less than one year after the company was established, the foundry expects to ramp up to volume production by March 2001.

SEZ claims thinnest wafer

Using a grinding tool made by Disco, the SEZ Group says it has made the thinnest 300-mm wafers available. The European manufacturer of spin processing equipment says the highly uniform wafers are as thin as 80 µm. In addition, the wafers are four times stronger than substrates that have been created with the typical grinding process, SEZ claims. The vendor notes that Disco's tool is able to grind wafers "with minimal damage and excellent uniformity."

The successful project demonstrated that it is possible to make ultrathin 300-mm wafers with high strength, SEZ points out. The company says its Bernoulli handler is capable of transferring the ultrathin wafers. It adds, however, that the industry's standard wafer cassettes and assembly tools cannot accommodate the transfer system. "We will need the industry's cooperation to resolve many issues once 300-mm wafers have been thinned," says Herwig Petschnig, SEZ's COO.

Tests validate copper tools

Motorola's Digital DNA Laboratories and Applied Materials have successfully demonstrated the production worthiness of Applied's 300-mm copper equipment set, Applied says. The chipmaker tested the Endura Electra Cu Barrier/Seed 300 system, Electra Cu iECP 300 electrochemical plating system, and Reflexion CMP tool at Applied's EPIC facility in Santa Clara, CA. The electrical performance results on multilevel copper interconnects are comparable to the semiconductors made on 200-mm wafers, Applied says.

Motorola says the testing was part of a business strategy to evaluate the production readiness of 300-mm gear. Motorola and Infineon recently manufactured commercial DRAMs using 300-mm equipment as part of their SC300 joint venture.

Hyundai may keep Wales fab

Rather than sell its wafer fab building in Wales at a "fire-sale price," Hyundai Electronics Industries may use the facility for a 300-mm fab to open in 2004. Although the company is prepared to sell the building, it sees the Wales shell as a potential backup location for its second 300-mm fab. "This may be more valuable for us than selling the fab [shell]," notes Hyundai Semiconductor president Sang Park.

The company, which plans to build its first 300-mm fab in South Korea, already has a 300-mm pilot line in one of its Chongju fabs. Concerned that supplies of DRAMs are beginning to outstrip demand, the firm will begin construction of the 300-mm Korean plant when its sees that "market conditions are right to move ahead." It believes all memory makers will slow down plans to launch 300-mm fabs and thinks that such facilities will not go into mass production before the end of 2002 or the beginning of 2003 at the earliest.

Chartered weighs options

Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world's third largest pure-play foundry supplier, is still uncertain about the profitability of shifting over to 300-mm wafer manufacturing for communications ICs and system-on-a-chip applications. While the "early drivers for 300-mm are memory," says Kevin Meyer, vp of worldwide business development, the company cut production of memory products in 2000 and almost doubled its revenues from the manufacture of communications ICs.

Meanwhile, the firm has merged its 300-mm development activities with Lucent Technologies after concluding a five-year agreement to develop next-generation processes for communications chips. The agreement provides Chartered with several 300-mm options, including a proposal to install a 300-mm pilot line in its new Fab 7 at its headquarters in Singapore's Woodlands Industrial Park and to build a 300-mm foundry at Fab 8, which is still in the planning stages.

Nanya to begin new fab

Taiwanese DRAM manufacturer Nanya Technology plans to break ground on a 300-mm wafer fab in April. At the same time, it hopes to increase production in its second 200-mm plant to 25,000 wafers per month. Despite fears that the market for DRAMs is cooling off, the company projects that the new 300-mm facility will be in mass production by the first quarter of 2003.

The firm believes that by the end of 2000 it will have become one of the top 10 manufacturers of DRAMs, and in 2001 it hopes to surpass Mosel Vitelic as the largest memory producer based in Taiwan. Along with other memory manufacturers such as Japan's Elpida Memory joint venture, Micron Technology, and Infineon Technologies in Germany, Nanya says it wanted to wait for the memory market to fully recover from the downturn of the late 1990s before going ahead with its 300-mm plans. But competition is forcing the world's memory makers to expedite their move to the larger wafer size.

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