The Belgian nanotech research centre, IMEC, announced today that it has signed a strategic partnership with 10 leading semiconductor equipment suppliers (AIXTRON AG, Applied Materials, Inc., ASM International, ASM-Lithography, Dainippon Screen Mfg. Co., Ltd. , FEI Company, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research Corporation, Tokyo Electron Limited and SEZ.). This follows a previous agreement with chipmakers – Infineon Technologies, Intel, Matsushita, Philips, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments to look into solutions for sub-45nm CMOS technologies.
On the menu will be:
193nm immersion lithography and EUV lithography;
Cleaning and contamination control;
Substrate modules: implementation of high-mobility layers and advanced source/drain engineering solutions;
Gate stack: high-k dielectrics and metal gates;
Emerging devices (e.g. FinFET, FDSOI);
Germanium-based devices;
Advanced interconnect solutions: ultra-low-k materials and wafer-level packaging;
Proof yet again of nanotechnology bringing the world together