11 April 2012

Japan’s AIST achieves graphene production on 300mm wafers using Aixtron system

Deposition equipment maker Aixtron SE of Herzogenrath, Germany says that its BM 300 system has been started up at Japan‘s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). The system was installed in 2011 in AIST’s cleanroom facility in Tsukuba and was commissioned by the local Aixtron support team. Dr Shintaro Sato, group leader at AIST, presented growth results on 10 April at the 2012 MRS Spring Meeting.

“With the demonstration of monolayer graphene growth on 300mm wafers at AIST, we have achieved a significant milestone,“ reckons Dr Ken Teo, Aixtron’s director of Nanoinstruments. The BM 300 platform for graphene production incorporates a gas delivery system for precise precursor delivery, ARGUS in-situ wafer thermal mapping, a high-uniformity wafer heater and an automated handling system. “The ability to deposit graphene with a high degree of controllability and repeatability onto 300mm wafers is an essential step in enabling large wafer-scale integration of graphene, and paves the way for exploiting the unique properties of graphene in next-generation semiconductor devices,“ Teo adds.

Sato’s team at AIST will use the system to deposit high-quality graphene with a controlled number of layers. This will be a key part of process technology used for creating low-voltage-operation CMOS field-effect transistors (FETs), in which the power supply voltage will be less than 0.3V.

The research is backed by the Funding Program for World-Leading Innovative R&D on Science and Technology (FIRST), which was approved by the Council for Science and Technology Policy, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan in 2009, and is being operated by the Cabinet Office, Government of Japan and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Wafer processing is being performed at AIST’s Collaborative Research Team Green Nanoelectronics Center (GNC) within the research project ‘Development of Core Technologies for Green Nanoelectronics’, which has been adopted for the FIRST Program. The GNC was established in April 2010 and involves researchers from both research and industry.

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