Riber, Imec Extend CMOS Collaboration

Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) supplier Riber SA of Bezons and R&D company imec of Louvain have agreed to continue their collaboration on epitaxy process technologies for next-generation III-V CMOS devices.

In the quest to miniaturize devices, technology has come to a point where CMOS scaling beyond the 45-nm node cannot be achieved by simply reducing transistor dimensions. The need for small form factors coupled with the stringent requirements of low current leakage and low energy performance has become critical for next-generation mobile devices.

In the new project, Riber’s 300-mm ultrahigh-vacuum (UHV) chamber, equipped with in situ tools for surface analysis and clustered with 300-mm silicon CMOS production equipment, will be evaluated for the production of advanced CMOS devices based on high-mobility germanium and III-V channels.

The project aims to analyze Riber’s UHV chamber for its control of surface structures to determine how moving from a 200-mm-platform research environment to a 300-mm fab will affect gate stack passivation. It also aims to demonstrate the technological viability of a 300-mm MBE module, clustered with “standard” 300-mm silicon CMOS production equipment.

“MBE is considered to be the most efficient technology to leverage compound semiconductors toward high-end applications with a tremendous market potential, such as mobile phones, telecom, automotive and satellite,” said Riber CEO Frédérick Goutard. “Using our ISA300 chamber in a 300-mm cluster configuration will allow for higher performance in terms of devices operating at high frequencies with reduced energy consumption, etcetera.”

“Imec can integrate the power of UHV-systems into state-of-the-art semiconductor production equipment on large-diameter wafers,” said Hans Lebon, vice president of fab operations and process step R&D at imec. “This will allow the application of powerful in situ surface analysis tools in CVD [chemical vapor deposition] and ALD [atomic layer deposition] equipment, which so far was not feasible due to the gas phase environment.”

For more information, visit: www.riber.com or www.imec.be