DARPA has contracted JMAR Technologies to develop x-ray masks suitable for manufacturing GaAs millimeter wave ICs used in radar, communications, and space applications. The supplier's SAL/NanoLithography (JSAL) division in Burlington, VT, received the contract from the Naval Air Warfare Center in Patuxent River, MD. Valued at up to $10 million, the award calls for JSAL to develop sub-100-nm NGL masks.

To help fulfill the contract, JSAL hired IBM's microelectronics division in Essex Junction, VT, to design and produce up to 50 masks during the first half of the two-year pact. The IBM division will receive approximately $3 million. The masks will be 500-nm-thick tantalum silicon adsorbers mounted on silicon carbide membranes measuring 2 µm thick.

JMAR, which makes proximity x-ray lithography (PXL) sources, is assembling a PXL system at the subdivision's facility in Burlington. The system comprises an upgraded JSAL 5J x-ray stepper with a NanoPulsar II laser plasma soft-x-ray source developed at company headquarters in San Diego. Completion is set for this summer. The system will begin performing sub-130-nm lithography by the end of the year, according to JMAR.

Calling it a world first, Showa Denko says it has developed a method to mass-produce an advanced metal complex increasingly demanded by both chipmakers and FPD manufacturers. The Japanese supplier has synthesized chelating agents such as EDTA to produce various types of dipivaloylmethanate (DPM) used in MOCVD processes. Until now, DPM has been too expensive to use because no method existed to produce it in volume at low cost, says Showa Denko, which has begun offering samples of the compound.

The DPM complex vaporizes at 200°C, a much lower temperature than typical organometallic compounds, according to Showa Denko. Because it decomposes easily in oxygen, DPM forms thin metal-oxide films, the company points out. Showa Denko's DPM complex contains hafnium, zirconium, ruthenium, copper, yttrium, barium, lanthanum, terbium, europium, or thulium. Electronic uses include FPD fluorescent materials and ferroelectric, insulating, and electrode films for ICs.