Editor's Page

Stressing the 'R' in R&D

It's ironic that many professionals caught up in the commercial whirlwinds of the semiconductor industry have little or no time for basic science. They don't need or want to know why something works, just that it does work. Many companies focus more on the "D" in R&D. Increasingly though, as physics and economics threaten to derail the bullet train of semiconductor technology advancement, the industry must deal with strategically important scientific questions. Those who have been reading MICRO's Mapping the Roadmap series know that the future development of defect reduction equipment is rife with these potential derailers.

One industry-university alliance dedicated to precompetitive R&D in the field of nanometer-scale surface defect measurement is the Consortium for Metrology of Semiconductor Nanodefects. It began in 1996 as an outgrowth of the Sematech-coordinated Particle Counting and Surface Microroughness Task Force. The consortium, based at Arizona State University and directed by Professor Dan Hirleman, consists of the university and eight corporate sponsors.

Companies don't join such consortia out of a love for basic scientific research. They want to see some tangible benefits, both in terms of technological gains and ultimately bottom-line economics. Hirleman points out general and specific justifications for participation in such cooperative groups. "My customers get access to $500,000 worth of research for $50,000. . . . When the inspection tool folks have access to our levels of expertise, which includes the fundamental modeling and experiments, it raises the level of understanding across the whole industry to a higher level."

As for specific benefits, he says "we are delivering and have delivered accurate, validated computational models developed by ASU." A new version of a scattering code is delivered to the member companies each year, a code that "companies are using to design the next generation of tools." Hirleman notes another important benefit: his dozen or so graduate and undergraduate students who intern with companies and are groomed for future positions after completion of their studies.

The average project costs about $70,000 per year, says Hirleman, with seven running now. The project closest to fruition focuses on bulk silicon defect detection. When completed by late this year or early 1999, it will provide a scattering standard for subsurface defects. Work also continues on electromagnetic scattering models, reference scatterometer development, CMP defect detection, deep-UV scatterometry, particle adhesion and laser dry cleaning, and high-aspect-ratio via inspection. Hirleman believes his lab is the only one in the world that can do all the steps required to "make angle-resolved scattering measurements of individual particles and nanofeatures on semiconductor surfaces." He says they have an SEM photo of every particle they've ever analyzed and can correlate those images with scattering and AFM images of individual particles. Such painstaking research produces information that will help manufacturers and users of advanced defect detection tools meet the demanding nanospecifications looming on the technological horizon.

The challenges facing Hirleman's consortium mirror those encountered by other research groups. "Our capabilities and facilities have to keep up with the fast pace of the electronics industries. We've got to keep our research fresh." Another challenge is what he calls "the different time constant between universities and industry." He may have a graduate student working on a project for two or three years, but his industry contact could change jobs more than once during that time. One hurdle facing not just the consortium but the industry as a whole is the issue of the measurement of 30-nm defects, an area where Hirleman must "stay a little ahead of the curve."

(For more information on the Consortium for Metrology of Semiconductor Nanodefects, log onto its Web site at http://enws347.eas.asu.edu/Consortiumindex.html.)

Tom Cheyney
Editor

tom.cheyney@cancom.com

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