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Laser Thermal Process Ready For Market

Ultratech says that it has successfully developed what it believes to be the IC industrys first laser thermal processing (LTP) technology. The company believes that this will allow manufacturers to scale down to the 20nm technology node. The new technology is the result of nearly nine years of intensive development. LTP uses laser heating, which can be focused at specific areas of the wafer, rather than across the wafer as happens in furnaces or with rapid thermal processing (RTP).
Ultratech says that it has successfully developed what it believes to be the IC industrys first laser thermal processing (LTP) technology. The company believes that this will allow manufacturers to scale down to the 20nm technology node. The new technology is the result of nearly nine years of intensive development. LTP uses laser heating, which can be focused at specific areas of the wafer, rather than across the wafer as happens in furnaces or with rapid thermal processing (RTP).


Ultratech chairman and CEO Arthur W Zafiropoulo reports that this technology is now ready for commercialisation - paving the way to thermal processing advances to improve both the speed and density of future-generation chips. LTP is expected to improve both device reliability and yields, increasing productivity and enhancing return on investment (ROI). LTP is expected to overcome current thermal diffusion limitations by greatly accelerating anneal/activation times. The technology's predecessor, RTP, enabled the submicron era - Ultratech expects LTP to change the landscape by becoming a key enabler of the nanotechnology era.


Ultratech worked in close cooperation with several of the industrys leading chipmakers in both the USA and Japan to validate the technology. LTP technology demonstrated the ability to activate extremely shallow junctions and contacts in just nanoseconds, thereby achieving the desired performance characteristics while using zero thermal budget. Test results demonstrate abrupt profile junctions with high surface concentrations down to the 20nm technology node. Tests also indicate that the process results are relatively insensitive to device and wafer pattern densities. This is essential to facilitating integration of the technology into diverse manufacturing environments.


Ultratech has already been awarded more than 20 patents with 40 more pending on the technology.


Implementation challenges have made it a long road to LTP commercialisation.
Somit Talwar, Ultratech vice-president for laser technology, reports: "Since the use of lasers for the annealing process had long been attempted, but without sufficient success, a new approach was needed. We believe that we have amassed the worlds foremost team of experts in the emerging laser processing arena and paired them with Ultratechs projection lithography experts to tackle this challenge. As a result of this collaboration, the precision capabilities of projection lithography have been successfully combined with the near-instantaneous heating properties of high-intensity lasers, enabling state-of-the-art thermal processing performance."


Ultratech says that it has optimised the technology for volume production and is now ready to enter the commercialisation phase of its LTP program. The companys first commercial product based on the new LTP technology platform will be for laser spike annealing (LSA), which will enable ultra-shallow junction formation for multiple generations. Over the past 12 months, Ultratech has been shipping R&D tools. The company has also taken orders for the first production tools for shipment at the end of this year, with volume-production shipments expected to begin 2004.



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