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News

4 April 2007

 

Rohm and Haas to manufacture Harvard’s amidinate ALD precursors as alternative to hafnium-based high-k dielectrics

Harvard University’s Office of Technology Development (OTD) has signed an exclusive agreement licensing Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials of Marlborough, MA, USA to manufacture and market rare-earth metal amidinate compounds, such as lanthanum, dysprosium and gadolinium. The materials technology was developed by the lab of Roy Gordon, the Thomas D. Cabot professor of Chemistry in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Harvard says that the amidinates can provide improved functionality, throughput and thermal stability in emerging atomic layer deposition (ALD) and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) processes. These are required for advanced high-k dielectric, metal gate and barrier/adhesion thin-film layers in CMOS silicon-based memory and logic devices with feature sizes of 45nm and below. In particular, the amidinate materials do not have the same integration challenges found with hafnium-based silicates, which were recently demonstrated by both Intel and IBM (as replacements for existing SiO2-based gate dielectric materials) for 45nm CMOS devices scheduled to enter production in late 2007/early 2008, according to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) . Several large semiconductor manufacturers have already started to develop material integration schemes using the ALD and CVD processes, says Harvard.

“The industry's march toward smaller, more powerful semiconductors must include class-leading ALD and CVD processes and materials,” says Dr Dominic Yang, business unit director for Rohm and Haas's Microelectronic Technologies business (which develops advanced CVD, ALD and MOCVD precursor materials) . “Our work with professor Gordon and his team strengthens Rohm and Haas's existing precursor solutions and builds upon our broad suite of advanced materials for the semiconductor industry."

Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials will produce the compounds at its North Andover, MA, facility and collaborate with Harvard scientists to develop the materials technology further for ALD and CVD processes.

Visit Rohm & Haas:

http://electronicmaterials.rohmhaas.com

Visit Harvard:

http://www.chem.harvard.edu/groups/gordon