Jun 20 2007
Ferro Corporation's Electronic Material Systems business has further advanced its breakthrough chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) technology with two slurries that enable high-yield processing of 65 nanometer and 45 nanometer node electronic devices. The products have been proven in commercial manufacturing of microelectronics. They will be showcased in booth #6359 at SEMICON West, taking place July 16-20 in San Francisco, CA.
CMP is a required process for manufacturing advanced integrated circuits. Ferro's new CMP slurries precisely plane silicon wafers to a uniform surface, enabling stacking of multifunctional layers that support smaller, faster, more energy-efficient microprocessors, memory chips with greater storage capacity, and lighter devices for mobile applications. Ferro met the needs of the semiconductor industry in 2004 with a ceria-based slurry that allowed manufacturers to move from 90 nanometer to 65 nanometer node technologies, and has optimized its CMP technologies to create the new products.
"Our customers have demanded increased performance to meet the needs of the new device generations, and our R&D team responded aggressively," said Barry Russell, Vice President, Ferro Electronic Material Systems. "Building on our more than 30 years of expertise in ceria particle engineering, and by working closely with our customers, we have made the technology breakthroughs that were required."
Ferro has formulated patented high selectivity shallow trench isolation (STI) CMP slurries with an optimized ceria particle that have post-etch defectivity levels approximately 1.5 to 3 times better than the first-generation slurry and offer a significant improvement over available market alternatives. One of the products to be introduced at SEMICON West, TruPlane(TM) 8272, is performing successfully in high-volume manufacturing of 65 nanometer node Flash devices, and Ferro is supplying leading edge slurries for 45 nanometer node STI logic devices.
The other product making its debut at SEMICON West is SureStop(TM) 8500, a patent-pending self-stopping CMP slurry for Inner Layer Dielectric (ILD) materials that offers improved efficiency and uniformity with lower defectivity compared to standard slurries. Formulated with Ferro's optimized ceria particles and proprietary additives, SureStop 8500 contains chemistries that automatically stop polishing when the topography has been removed. It saves time and cost relative to standard ILD slurries and is now being used to simplify certain multi-step planarization processes.