CENTER FOR ADVANCED ELECTRONIC MATERIALS PROCESSING

Microelectronics manufacturing technology is rapidly moving toward integrated circuits with submicron minimum feature sizes. This is being driven by the development of devices and circuits with reduced device lateral dimensions, increased density per chip, thinner material layers, increased use of the vertical dimension (three-dimensional circuits), low volume/fast turnaround design (ASIC's), increased use of heterojunctions, mixed material technologies, and quantum-based device structures. These trends require precise control of thin layers processed on wafers and a need for lower temperature processing or a lower overall thermal budget. The Center for Advanced Electronic Materials Processing program is composed of thrust areas focused on the development of a fundamental understanding of the basic principles, capabilities, and limitations of technologies for low thermal budget, in situ, single-wafer advanced electronic materials processing. The knowledge base and technology advances resulting from the various research areas are incorporated into the development of various multichamber process module clusters for the demonstration of the advantages of automated single-wafer processing over conventional processing techniques. These clusters provide a capability for creating multiple layer structures of high quality without exposure of the substrate to additional contamination during and between processing steps. Specific device demonstration vehicles have been defined which exercise the process technologies and evaluate the effectiveness of integrating the respective technologies.