Integrated circuits: Resistless processing simplifies production and cuts costs.

摘要

Reducing the complexity and cost of producing deep-submicrometer integrated circuits (ICs) will soon be possible using a revolutionary approach being developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Resistless Projection Doping (RPD) will eliminate the need for photoresist processing during the impurity doping step. This single innovation will reduce the doping sequence from 13 steps to 1 and eliminate the need for five pieces of capital equipment costing more than $5 million. The overall cost of high-volume wafer fabrication will be reduced by more than 10 percent. In addition, the LLNL RPD machine is compact and modular, minimizing facilities costs when compared to today's industry-standard doping equipment. These physical characteristics of the machine also allow the RPD process to be easily incorporated into single-wafer, ''cluster'' processing tools. When integrated with existing deposition, etching, and annealing steps and developing lithography techniques, the LLNL doping process completes the technology set required to produce a flexible fabrication facility of the future. At one-fifth the cost of current mega-fabrication facilities, the availability of these compact, low-volume, smart factories will give US manufacturers a substantial competitive advantage in the world-wide marketplace for high-value custom and semi-custom integrated circuits.