INDUSTRY NEWS

ROUND THE CIRCUIT

Chem giants target slurries

Two of the world's largest chemicals suppliers have launched a new business that will manufacture and sell colloidal silica-based slurries. The partners, DuPont and Air Products & Chemicals, will each have a half stake in the venture, called DuPont Air Products NanoMaterials and known as DA NanoMaterials. Under a sales and distribution agreement, the partners have been cooperating for more than a year. DA NanoMaterials will have its headquarters in Carlsbad, CA, and operate an applications and formulation lab in Tempe, AZ. The venture also acquired an existing DuPont plant in Ruabon, Wales. DuPont already makes colloidal silica slurries for silicon wafer polishing. The market for slurries is an estimated $500 million annually with a 25% yearly rate of growth, according to DA NanoMaterials.

Meanwhile, a DuPont subsidiary has signed an agreement with Shipley to make photoresists and antireflective coatings for manufacturing microchips at the 157-nm wavelength. The agreement calls for DuPont iTechnologies to license its proprietary fluoropolymer binder resin technology to Shipley. The vendor will be the first licensee for the technology. DuPont specializes in photopolymers and fluoropolymers; Shipley, in photoresists. The partners expect to introduce the products in 2003.

Nikon springs into CMP

Nikon has taken its expertise in stepper manufacturing and lens polishing and focused it on the CMP market. This spring the world's largest stepper supplier will begin selling planarization tools with a proprietary design to Japanese customers. Nikon believes it can adapt a unique lens-polishing technique to the company's CMP tools that will allow it to compete against established firms such as Applied Materials, SpeedFam-IPEC, and Ebara. Nikon's system polishes wafers with their surfaces facing up instead of down. Placing the polishing pad over the wafer surface offers several advantages, Nikon says. For 200-mm substrates, the system uses a higher rotating speed than competing tools. The higher speed enables the machine to polish the surface at the same rate as other tools but at a pressure in the range of 100 to 200 g, lower than the typical 300-g rate of conventional systems. Lower pressure achieves more-even polishing, Nikon maintains. Face-up polishing also simplifies inspection, unlike competing systems requiring a hole bored through the polishing table to permit viewing. Lower consumable costs are another claimed benefit. The Nikon tool applies slurry directly through the polishing head to the space between the wafers and the pad.

Don Staub, a Nikon spokesman based in Belmont, CA, says if the launch is successful, the company hopes to begin exporting the system to clients outside of Japan sometime in 2002. Admitting the business risks, Staub notes that Nikon believes it has the technology and size to snare a good share of an annual CMP market that stands at $2.5 billion and is expected to grow to $4 billion in 2004.

Pact helps MEMS designers

A new licensing agreement will expedite the development and manufacturing of MEMS devices, according to the principals involved. Sandia National Laboratories and Microcosm Technologies say their pact will help engineers design micromachines and determine performance characteristics before proceeding with fabrication. Microcosm makes MEMS software. The agreement permits Microcosm to use Sandia's design tools in the software it sells. Sandia operates a 30,000-sq-ft Class 1 fab for silicon micromachines in Albuquerque. Sandia has a technology for manufacturing, called SUMMiT V, that officials believe will help develop an infrastructure for MEMS development. Microcosm says the Sandia technology will provide a common interface for producing micromachines and eventually lead to wider commercial access to advanced MEMS technology developed by national lab. Information: jay@sandia.gov; http:// www.memcad.com.

State backs nano institute

The California NanoSystems Institute has received $100 million from the state for research into nanotechnology. The institute was one of three organizations chosen to receive funds under the California Institutes for Science and Innovation program. The four-year program was established to foster the development of fields critical to the future of the state's economy. The institute, a joint enterprise of UCLA and UC Santa Barbara, will receive $25 million annually. Each of the funded institutions must raise $2 in matching funds from other sources for each $1 it receives in state funds. Nearly 30 corporations—among them Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems—have pledged approximately $50 million to the California NanoSystems Institute.

The institute's goals include the atom-by-atom creation of materials that combine unusual properties, including materials that are stronger than steel but lighter than plastic. Martha Krebs, former assistant secretary of energy and former director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, is the institute's founding director. "Bottom-up or biologically inspired fabrication is at the heart of nanotechnology," says James Heath, a chemistry professor at UCLA and the institute's scientific codirector. "This approach to manufacturing has huge ramifications and will transform all industries from high technology to transportation to medicine."

MicroHome | Search | Current Issue | MicroArchives
Buyers Guide | Media Kit