EDITOR'S PAGE

Euro-style staying power

China’s blossoming potential may help quicken the next semiconductor upturn, but Europe’s staying power will be a major factor in any sustainable recovery. The continent accounts for nearly 25% of electronic systems production, more than 20% of the global semiconductor pie, and some 14% of the chip equipment market, according to statistics released at the Semicon Europa trade show held in Munich in mid-April. But it’s not just about the amount of Euros the region will generate: the European chipmakers, supply chain companies, and research organizations are using diversification, cooperation, and product maturation to keep themselves perched on the innovative cusp of chipmaking and microsystems technologies.

Rather than compete full bore with the Applieds, TELs, and KLA-Tencors, many European tool and subsystems suppliers have found success through niche and crossover applications, from compound semiconductors to the momentum-gathering MEMS market. Others are discovering that their once-esoteric systems, largely relegated to use in the research community, are migrating into production roles as critical dimensions plummet toward 100 nm and below.

Unaxis’s strategy has focused on three segments, according to spokesman Jürg Steinmann: telecom, advanced silicon, and advanced packaging. Within the telecom realm resides the company’s compound semiconductor work, such as its tools used on IBM’s silicon germanium line with “strained silicon” processes controlled down to the 20-Å level. Suss MicroTec (formerly Karl Suss) offers a “complete solution for MEMS manufacturing, except plasma tools,” said MEMS division manager Christian Ossmann. The company’s product line has been enhanced by a new fusion bond cluster tool for micromechanical devices that can “clean, dry, align, and bond in one closed chamber, with high throughput and high yields.”

Traditionally known as a lab and R&D tool supplier, Oxford Instruments is getting into the production end. Mike Smyth, the company’s international sales manager, told me that their dual-etch-mode (anisotropic and isotropic) analysis tool has been spec’ed at Intel for 300-mm FA work. Thierry Emeraud of Sopra, a French metrology outfit with a 25-year pedigree, said his company’s strong R&D position has helped push their systems into production roles. He cited the company’s 300-mm-capable, deep-UV spectroscopic ellipsometry tool. It’s gaining acceptance for process and product qualification as well as providing materials composition control for low- and high-k dielectric films, copper seed and barriers, ultrashallow junctions, and dopant profiles.

Bede Scientific Instruments is another Euro-metrology vendor whose products are migrating from the laboratory to the fabrication line. The past 12 to 18 months have seen the rollout of a fully automated x-ray refraction tool which, noted applications scientist David Joyce, a “major semiconductor manufacturer has been using for in-line process control.” Also riding the advanced process control wave is Dublin-based Scientific Systems’ Straatum group. It employs a combination of proprietary sensors and process software for fault detection and classification (FDC), crucial elements of any productivity enhancement and yield improvement efforts, according to company vp Ciaran O’Morain. “Advanced sensor inputs run through an advanced knowledge base to check the robustness of the process,” he explains. “We can integrate into real-time MES and SPC factory systems…and be up and running quickly with FDC.”

A European chipmaker, tool supplier, or materials provider that doesn’t have some sort of agreement with research centers such as LETI, IMEC, or the Fraunhofer Institutes is a rarity. SEZ, the fast-growing Austrian surface prep tool purveyor, announced the signing of another joint development project with IMEC shortly before the Munich show. Heinz Oyrer, the company’s director of strategic marketing and planning, said the two tools installed at the Belgian R&D center will focus on a variety of environmentally friendly, next-generation front- and backside cleaning processes.

At the conclusion of an industry executive news panel held at the show, Ron Leckie of Infrastructure wondered if the early signs of a recovery “have legs,” noting that excess capacity still needs to be worked off. The Scottish-born prognosticator sees no capacity growth likely until the second half of 2003, despite an apparent “thaw in equipment spending.” Whether or not the inevitable upturn kicks in before then (as we all hope), rest assured that the European players on the global semiconductor pitch will be in the first rank of contention..

Tom Cheyney
Editor
tom.cheyney@cancom.com

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