Aixtron Joins EU Materials Project

Aixtron AG, an Aachen, Germany-based maker of of III-nitride metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) reactors and machinery used to manufacture compound semiconductors, is among participants in a two-year European Commission-funded project, CHEMAPH (Chemical Vapor Deposition of Chalcogenide Materials for Phase-change Memories), which will demonstrate the feasibility of a film manufacturing process based on MOCVD. Coordinated by the Materials and Devices for Microelectronics-Italian National Research Council (MDM-INFM), part of the Italian Institute for the Physics of Matter in Milan, Italy, the consortium is also comprised of ST Microelectronics, Italy; Epichem, UK; Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Spain; and Vilnius University, Lithuania. CHEMPAH is expected to result in the development of a high-performance deposition system for materials to be used in next-generation memory devices. The potential of chalcogenide materials for use in electronic memory applications has generated attention as a result of its success as an optical storage media material. This technique is known to enable the production of better-quality thin films compared to those obtained by a physical vapor deposition technique called sputtering, and will enable the implementation of phase-change films in nanoelectronic devices, Aixtron said.