Tegal has announced that the deadline to submit bids for its nanolayer deposition technology (NLD) intellectual property portfolio is September 30, 2011. The deadline is subject to being withdrawn or extended.
The intellectual property portfolio comprises more than 35 US and international patents in the fields of NLD, plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (ALD) and pulsed- chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The NLD technology fills the gap between highly conformal, low output ALD and non-conformal, high output CVD.
Tegal's NLD fills performance gap in deposition technologies for semiconductor production
The NLD technology offers novel process functionalities for depositing composite and nanolaminate films, while eliminating the precursor supply restrictions caused by ALD. It offers process latitude for the deposition of tertiary alloy films such as GeSbTe films utilized in phase change memories as well as for the deposition of complex oxides such as high-k dielectrics. It utilizes plasma treatment processes as a replacement for paired chemical reactants to augment the process latitude in the production of sophisticated metal alloys or dielectric films.
The image shown demonstrates the conformality of thin films against the deposition rate for various thin film deposition technologies utilized in the fabrication of semiconductor devices. Tegal’s Chief Technologist, Robert Ditizio stated that sophisticated chip designs often need flexibility of process over existing deposition techniques to sustain broad process windows and attain performance goals. The company’s NLD family offers various choices for enhancing the life of traditional CVD process hardware by eliminating the necessity to shift fully to lower output ALD processes, he added.