September 19, 2008
Albany NanoTech readies new 300-mm R&D fab
ALBANY, N.Y. -- Albany NanoTech will shortly open a new facility--a massive operation that will focus on 22-nm R&D technology, post-CMOS processes and clean technology.
The previously-announced facility, NanoFab 300 East, is slated to open in early 2009. The $150 million project includes a 100,000-square-foot building, which itself will house a new and advanced 300-mm R&D fab.
It also includes an additional 250,000-square-foot office and laboratory building. This part will house the new headquarters of International Sematech, which recently moved its main office from Austin, Texas to Albany, thanks in part to generous incentives by the state.
It will also house a ''test farm'' in clean technology. One of the proposed projects in the facility is also 22-nm R&D. Leading-edge chip makers are just rolling out their 45-nm designs, with 32- and 22-nm in R&D. 22-nm devices could hit the market by 2011 or so.
The 22-nm effort is said to be led by IBM Corp.'s ''fab club." IBM and its partners already conduct R&D at Albany NanoTech. IBM's other joint development partners include, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd., Freescale Inc., Infineon Technologies AG, NEC Electronics Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., STMicroelectronics N.V. and Toshiba Corp.
This week, IBM claimed to make a big breakthrough in 22-nm. Amid probable delays with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, IBM plans to extend 193-nm immersion and move towards ''computational scaling'' technology for the 22-nm node and perhaps beyond.
Current optical lithography is expected to hit the wall at the 32-nm node. ''Computational scaling'' is said to overcome those limits and extend 193-nm immersion.
A key to ''computation scaling'' is a partnership between IBM and Mentor, which plans to devise a new resolution enhancement technique (RET) to enable 22-nm designs and perhaps beyond. This RET technology is known as source-mask optimization, which is said to optimize both mask layout and illumination simultaneously to maximize image contrast in a scanner.
IBM, Intel and others are also conducting R&D for the 16-nm node and beyond, but the question is how far can CMOS scale? Some say 16-nm. Others believe below 10-nm, possibly 6-nm.
As a result of the uncertainty, the industry is searching to find a solution for the post-CMOS era. To find a solution, the Institute for Nanoelectronics Discovery and Exploration (INDEX) was established at Albany NanoTech in 2006. It is one of four nanoelectronics research institutes in the U.S.
INDEX partners leading university researchers from Harvard University, Yale University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Purdue University, Georgia Institute of Technology and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), with on-site corporate researchers from Intel, Micron, AMD, IBM, Texas Instruments and Freescale.
INDEX is exploring carbon nanotubes, quantum dots, spintronics, among others. "Some form of spintronics are showing promise," said Alain Kaloyeros, senior vice president and chief executive of the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the University of Albany, N.Y.--State University of New York (SUNY). Albany Nanotech is part of CNSE.
Carbon nanotubes ''are far more challenging than spintronics," he said. With carbon nanotubes, it remains difficult to find a feasible switching element, he added.
INDEX is part of the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI), a consortium of companies in the Semiconductor Industry Association. Semiconductor Research Corp. has formed a subsidiary -- Nanoelectronics Research Corporation (NERC) -- to administer the NRI research program.
