INDUSTRY NEWS

Infineon expands VA fab

Infineon plans to expand capacity at its 300-mm fab module in Richmond, VA. The German semiconductor manufacturer will begin moving in equipment to start production of advanced DRAM devices by early 2005. Once the initial expansion phase is completed, the site will be capable of running 25,000 300-mm wafer starts per month, with additional shell space to enlarge capacity as market conditions dictate. The new module—which will ramp memory chips with 110-nm technology, then quickly transition to 90-nm chips—will more than double total capacity at the Richmond site. The company plans to add 800 employees to the existing workforce of 1750.

"This initial expansion of capacity at Richmond will allow us to accelerate the shift of production from memory to logic products at our 200-mm plant in Dresden," explains Andreas von Zitzewitz, Infineon's COO. "We are leveraging the existing building shell and synergies gained with the experienced staff at Richmond to quickly bring 300-mm capacity on-line in a way that is consistent with our corporate capital expenditure plans. The excellent infrastructure and state-of-the-art manufacturing expertise at Richmond make this the fastest and most cost-effective way for us to respond to changing market conditions."

Entegris finds FOSB partners

In order to ensure compatibility and reliability for its front-opening shipping boxes (FOSBs), Entegris has established a partner program with eight other semiconductor equipment and services suppliers. The partners will work with the Chaska, MN–based materials-handling company to ensure that its automated front-opening-interface mechanical-standard FOSBs work well with their 300-mm tool loadports, wafer sorters, and stockers. The participating suppliers will be involved with early design and qualification of Entegris's product development efforts, as well as jointly marketing certain product innovations. The companies that have joined the program so far are Asyst, Brooks Automation, Honda Electron, Recif, Rorze, Shinsung, Yaskawa Electric, and InterNOVA.

TEL, Mattson collaborate

A strategic technology-development collaboration combines Tokyo Electron's advanced gate dielectric systems with Mattson's rapid thermal processing expertise. The two equipment suppliers say they have successfully integrated Mattson's low-pressure annealing (LPA) module in TEL's Trias slot-plane antenna (SPA) plasma processing tool, with several of the modules already placed at key customer sites. Mattson, which will provide technology support for the system, will make the LPA unit exclusively for TEL, which will offer customer support. The companies add that the next phase of the joint development partnership should lead to improved processes for high-k dielectrics, ultrathin interface layers, and plasma oxynitride films for gate and capacitor applications in the logic and memory markets.

Air Products wheels, deals

Air Products has bolstered its electronics portfolio on several fronts. On the joint-venture front, the company will expand its polishing and planarization business with its partner in DuPont Air Products (DA) NanoMaterials. Both companies will add recently acquired CMP businesses to the partnership, which will offer a wider range of abrasives, extended surfactant chemistries, and novel slurry chemistries. Air Products will contribute relevant elements of the former Ashland electronic chemicals business, while DuPont will pitch in the slurry technologies of EKC. Floyd McClure will be CEO of the venture.

On the acquisition side, Air Products has bought Precision Purification Services, a parts-cleaning and preventive maintenance service provider to the chipmaking industry. The PPS buy adds an 18,000-sq-ft copper-segregated facility in Dallas to the acquirer's existing parts-cleaning operations in Carrollton, TX, and Phoenix. The gas and chemical supplier also will increase its nitrogen trifluoride (NF₃) production by nearly 50% at its Hometown, PA, plant. The plan for expanding production of the chamber-cleaning gas is scheduled to be completed and on-line by spring 2005, the company says.

AMD opens innovation centers

Facilities in Austin, TX, and Dresden, Germany, will be used as design and development centers for integrating AMD's automated precision manufacturing (APM) efforts into Fab 36, the company's 300-mm fab under construction in Dresden. APM comprises more than 250 patented fab automation and optimization technologies used to reduce time to yield on new technologies and decrease manufacturing costs. Version 2.0 of the current APM generation, designed for 200 mm, is fully operational at the company's fabs 25 and 30. Version 3.0 of the suite—featuring improved wafer-level control, in-line yield prediction, and active scheduling—is slated for integration in Fab 36.

"Thanks to APM 2.0 and the superior workforce in AMD Fab 30, we now ramp our processor products to volume production using a fraction of the silicon wafers required three years ago, even though we have transitioned to a new design and increased the number of transistors threefold to (a) total (of) more than 100 million," comments Gary Heerssen, the company's corporate manufacturing group vice president.

APM acts as a kind of "central nervous system" in Fab 30, he adds, by forming an integrated fabric of communication and control linkages with the hundreds of tools throughout the facility. This sophisticated and highly integrated manufacturing infrastructure constantly monitors the health of microprocessors in production by collecting and analyzing data from the tool sets as the wafers enter and exit them for processing. Using this real-time data analysis, APM automatically and consistently recommends modifications to the routing of wafer groups through the fab, as well as changes to the recipes used with each tool, to optimize the chips' performance.

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