Silicon pilot line
Introduction
In 2007 the rampup of the 300mm facility has been finalized. All device scaling programs have been transferred to the 300mm facility, including the non-volatile memory (NVM) program. Using a 65nm base line process, the research on 300mm has been focused on the 32nm node, and first activities on 22nm started.
In the 200mm facility, the CMOS scaling related activities have been substantially reduced. The More Than Moore activities increased, mainly based on the SiGe micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) module.
200mm pilot line
In 2007, some of the historic activities in the 200mm line such as CMOS technology transfer, CMOS advanced circuit demonstrators, mixed-signal processing and the explore program (alternative substrates (Ge&III/V) and nanoelectronics research), continued.
The CMOS device scaling activities have stopped in the course of 2007. MEMS devices related activities increased, mainly based on the SiGe module. This also includes early work on device yield based on this type of devices. In 2008, a further increase of this work may be expected.
As there seems to be a large industry pull for the 3D-IC program, this activity has gained quite some momentum in 2007 which will result in a further expansion of these activities in 2008 and a faster migration of this work to 300mm.
300mm pilot line
By the end of 2007, the 65nm base line back-end-of-line (BEOL) modules up to 3 levels of metal will be qualified, allowing transferring the circuit activities from 200mm to 300mm early 2008.
At present all scaling based device activities are running on 300mm (planar, EMERALD, NVM, litho, cleaning). The device related activities have been heavily focused on the gate module, CMOS based high-k/metal gate devices.
By the end of 2007, a large effort on high-k and metal-gate materials development has been started. This aimed at advanced logic, dynamic random access memory (DRAM) metal-insulator-metal (MIM) cap and NVM. This seems to result in an additional wave of several new materials being introduced, which require careful contamination evaluation. The research on these materials is focused on deposition technique, module integration and electrical evaluation.
Fab output improvement
A focused activity on cycle-time improvement in 300mm resulted in a factor 2 improvement. From April till November, a gradual improvement could be noted from month to month. This has been combined with an increase in the output volume with a factor 2. In order to realize this, a substantial investment program started in 2006 in order to increase the overall 300mm fab capacity and eliminate several bottlenecks.
The main focus in 2008 will be to maintain this performance and to stabilize the base line processes in the 300mm line.
In 2007, a lot of effort was made to bring the fab automation at a next level in 2007. A front opening unified pod (FOUP) stocker has been introduced in the beginning of the year and a second one is being installed at the end of the year. The first process tools have been automated, meaning an automated recipe download. For nearly all process metrology tools, automatic data-download has been set up, including FOUP identity reading and automatic limit checking. The operator GUI interface has been updated allowing to set the priorities centrally and display them to the operator. The operator monitor boards contain all required information in order to successfully process the lot. Last but not least, a lot of new reports have been made available at 300mm.
In 2008, the main information and communication technology (ICT) focus will be the replacement of Comet tools in the 200mm line with FAB300, so both facilities will have the same manufacturing execution system by the end of 2008.