Targeting silicon geometries below 50nm, German research
powerhouse Fraunhofer Institute, Infineon Technologies, AMD and the
Federal Government of Saxony officially opened the Fraunhofer
Center for Nanoelectronic Technology (CNT) in Dresden on
Tuesday.
Last August, the partners signed the memorandum of understanding
for the establishment of the CNT in a public-private partnership to
develop new process technologies for nanoelectronics, as the leap
from microelectronics to nanoelectronics is a big challenge for the
semiconductor industry.
“The Fraunhofer Center for Nanoelectronic Technology is
exemplary for a new way of interlocking science and
production,” said Alfred Gossner, a member of
Frauhofer’s executive board.
“It is only possible with the mutual efforts of science
and industry that we have a chance here in Germany to be actively
involved in the development of such huge technological challenges
like the transition to nanoelectronics,” he added.
The focus of the CNT is to expand the Fraunhofer alliance
microelectronics competences in cooperation with leading
semiconductor manufacturers in the field of technology development,
the partners said.
As such, the CNT is part of the European initiative European
Nanoelectronic Initiative Advisory Council (ENIAC), in place to
strengthen the field of nanoelectronics.
The CNT, being compared to IMEC in Belgium and LETI in France,
will directly collaborate with the industry and is the European
answer to initiatives like Sematech in the US and Selete in
Japan.
The centre contains clean-room facilities with a surface area of
800m², as well as an infrastructure that complies with
industry standards, with the goal to make maximum usage of the
synergies between science, development and the manufacturing of
process technologies for nanoelectronics at the facility in
Dresden.
“This research platform gives us the opportunity to
develop innovative process solutions fast and efficiently and to
transfer them directly into the manufacturing environment,”
said Andreas von Zitzewitz, a board member of Infineon.
“Given the short life cycles of products and technology
within a cyclical semiconductor industry and taking the rapidly
augmenting development costs into consideration this is one of the
most critical tasks, which can be solved preferably through close
cooperation in research and development."
With Infineon’s 300mm DRAM production already under way
and AMD’s two microprocessor facilities, the partners believe
Dresden offers excellent local conditions for a cooperative
research platform for nanoelectronics.
In the CNT’s clean-room facilities Infineon and AMD, in
cooperation with Fraunhofer researchers, the technical university
of Dresden and other institutes will be able to develop process
technologies for the manufacturing of nanoelectronics.
The CNT said it is open to cooperation with materials and
equipment manufacturers.
Industry partners and government will invest a total of
€700m in the expansion of the nanoelectronics location in
Germany.
The contract agreement for the CNT is valid for five years
initially, with mutual evaluation to take place at the end of this
time.
The Fraunhofer Institute and the industry partners are aiming at
operating a permanently working research platform dependent on
development of the markets and of supporting R&D measures.
The CNT will focus on the processing of selected steps for the
manufacturing of high-density memory components as well as
high-performance transistors, to which Fraunhofer brings
competences of it's institutes in the fields of material and
deposition systems, basic processes, assembly and packaging, design
technologies and lithography.
www.amd.com
www.fraunhofer.de
www.infineon.com