Intellectual property
The proprietary layer-transfer technique creates a film of stressed silicon onto a target substrate with exceptional quality and efficiency. In prior strained silicon technologies, the silicon film is stressed through its epitaxial growth onto a relaxed silicon-germanium layer. Limitations such as the continued presence of germanium in the substrate and high device film defect levels have kept this technology from mainstream adoption and use.
The new substrate production technique is free of germanium and defect levels can be reduced through donor process optimisation. The process also allows either strained-silicon films to be transferred onto a silicon substrate resulting in strained silicon-on-silicon (sSi-on-Si) or onto an oxidized substrate for strained-SOI (s-SOI). The low-temperature processing inherent in the method also limits germanium diffusion and defect propagation effects present in other higher temperature methods.
Francois J Henley, SiGen president and CEO, comments: "We believe that these structures will be utilised in mainstream next-generation semiconductor applications."
A US district court judge denied a Samsung appeal against two sanctions related to Samsung's discovery deficiencies in litigation with MOSAID.
However, one sanction was modified to address Samsung's concern that MOSAID might characterise PMOS DRAMs as NMOS DRAMs. MOSAID is now permitted to choose any Samsung DRAM as a representative part so long as at least one them is an NMOS DRAM.
Samsung is also precluded from challenging MOSAID's expert evidence as to the operation of the representative parts insofar as such challenges rest on any assumptions made as part of performing simulations or other analyses of representative DRAMs.
An appeal on two remaining sanctions concerning adverse inference and attorney's fees will be resolved in a subsequent opinion. The trial is due to begin February 1, 2005.
