Watch again - Material development for MRAM and FRAM stacks at Fraunhofer IPMS-CNT

Material development for MRAM and FRAM stacks

Dr. Lukas Gerlich & Konrad Seidel (Fraunhofer IPMS - Center Nanoelectronic Technologies)

Today, data is the lifeblood disrupting many industries. The vast majority of this data is stored in the form of non-volatile magnetic bits in hard disk drives. This technology was developed more than half a century ago and has reached fundamental scaling limits that prevent further increases in storage capacity. New approaches are needed.

In the webinar, FRAM (Ferroelectric Random Access Memory) and MRAM (Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory) will be presented as two promising concepts for future ultra-low power memory technologies. Special attention will be paid to material development and fabrication on state-of-the-art industrial equipment for 300 mm wafers.

Watch now: Webinars - Fraunhofer IPMS

Previous Webinar: Fe- FET - A Memory Device for Maximum Integration, Konrad Seidel (IoT Components and Systems) Webinars - Fraunhofer IPMS

Picosun Group has launched an ALD Medical Materials Library

Picosun Group has launched a Medical Materials Library consisting of over ten materials intended for medical-related coating and encapsulation with ALD.

"Picosun’s Medical Materials Library targeted to the medical device manufacturer segment reflects the innovative spirit of the company. I’m really excited over the fact that we are able to flexibly design tailored encapsulations according to our customers’ needs. I’m especially proud of our medical customers and partners who are already in pre-clinical and clinical trials with their ALD coated devices”, says Juhani Taskinen, Vice President, Medical Business Area of Picosun Group.

LINK: https://hubs.li/H0_FvBS0

The materials library is a reflection of over six years extensive research and development that shows ALD can render biocompatibility to a substrate coated with Picosun library materials. Biocompatibility tests were carried out according to ISO standards in accredited third-party laboratories. The performed tests included for example cytotoxicity, antimicrobial activity, skin irritation or sensitization, hemocompatibility, bacterial endotoxins, bioburden and sterilization residuals. From the tested materials Picosun is able to design tens of different types of end materials according to customer needs.

ALD technology provides dimensionless coating thus enabling miniaturization of components and devices in the field of electronic implants. Antibacterial function together with excellent barrier properties and outstanding corrosion resistance pave the way for using the materials both in electronic and orthopedic implants and show high potential in pharmaceutical packaging. The superior film uniformity and conformality ensure a pinhole-free coverage over even the smallest details of the device.

How Did Plasmas Change ALD? - w/ Erwin Kessels (ALD Stories Ep 8)

In Episode 8 of ALD Stories, Tyler chats with Eindhoven University of Technology professor, Erwin Kessels, about plasma-enhanced ALD, industry applications, and Erwin's Atomic Limits blog & teaching strategies. 

In this video: 

00:00 - Intro

  01:46 - PEALD Basics, Ions, & Applications 

20:56 - Semiconductor Industry Advantages 

28:05 - Photovoltaic Passivation 

36:43 - Atomic Limits Blog & Teaching 

45:25 - Outro 

Professor Erwin Kessels - https://www.tue.nl/en/research/resear... 

Atomic Limits Blog - https://www.atomiclimits.com/

Call for abstracts - AVS 22nd International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD 2022) in Ghent, Belgium

 

Call for Abstracts Due February 3, 2022

Review Topics & Submit Abstract

The AVS 22nd International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD 2022) featuring the 9th International Atomic Layer Etching Workshop (ALE 2022) will be a three-day meeting dedicated to the science and technology of atomic layer controlled deposition of thin films and now topics related to atomic layer etching. Since 2001, the ALD conference has been held alternately in the United States, Europe and Asia, allowing fruitful exchange of ideas, know-how and practices between scientists. This year, the ALD conference will again incorporate the Atomic Layer Etching 2022 Workshop (ALE 2022), so that attendees can interact freely. The conference will take place Sunday, June 26-Wednesday, June 29, 2022, at the International Convention Center (ICC) Ghent in Ghent, Belgium. As in past conferences, the meeting will be preceded (Sunday, June 26) by one day of tutorials and a welcome reception. Sessions will take place (Monday-Wednesday, June 27-29) along with an industry tradeshow. All presentations will be audio-recorded and provided to attendees following the conference (posters will be included as PDFs). Anticipated attendance is 800+.

Key Deadlines: Abstract Submission Deadline: February 3, 2022 Author Acceptance Notifications: March 16, 2022 Early Registration Deadline: May 15, 2022 Hotel Reservation Deadline: May 25, 2022 JVST Special Issue Deadline: November 1, 2022

ALD/ALE 2022 Website

ALD Program Chairs   Program Chair: Christophe Detavernier (Ghent University, Belgium) Program Co-Chair: Jolien Dendooven (Ghent University, Belgium) Program Co-Chair: Paul Poodt (TNO/Holst Center, The Netherlands)

ALE Program Chairs Program Chair: Erwin Kessels (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands) Program Co-Chair: Harm Knoops (Oxford Instruments, The Netherlands) Program Co-Chair: Jean-Francois de Marneffe (imec, Belgium)

2021 November Networking - ALD at Aalto University

Date and time: Fri 26.11.2021 starting at 13 Event will be held at Aalto CHEM, Kemistintie 1, Espoo and online in Zoom at https://aalto.zoom.us/j/68826769819 (password to be sent to registered participants via email a few days before the event)

2021 November Networking - ALD at Aalto University | Aalto University

Programme consists of (1) lectures (can be followed in Zoom): 

Brief introduction to ALD, Invited guest talks (Prof. Barry, Prof. van Ommen, Prof. Malygin), update of the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA); and (2) posters by local ALD research (not in Zoom) ("local" may be broadly interpreted).

Registration DL for participation with posters: Sun 14.11.2021. The number of posters may need to be limited; "first come, first serve".

Registration DL for local in-person participation: Mon 22.11.2021. The number of participants may need to be limited; "first come, first serve".

Registration DL for Zoom participation: Wed 24.11.2021. The number of participants might need to be limited (but likely not); if limiting is needed, "first come, first serve".

Organizing committee: Prof. Riikka Puurunen (chairperson), Dr. Aitor Arandia Gutierrez, Dr. Jorge Velasco, M.Sc. Jihong Yim. All from Aalto University, School of Chemical Engineering, Department of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering, Catalysis research group.

AlixLabs, Breaking through the Crisis – Startups

While the world is dealing with the semiconductor shortage, startups are gearing up to fill in the gap with their innovative offerings to ensure that crisis doesn’t last long. In this interview, the co-founder and CEO of AlixLabs, Dr. Jonas Sundqvist discusses about what led us to this crisis, how to fix it and what role startups have in ensuring interrupted supply of silicon. He also discusses about what next when this crisis is fixed? Is there another crisis that may arise?

NCD Supplied new ALD equipment for protective coating of semiconductor equipment’s products

NCD supplied new ALD equipment to the customer based in Korea for coating products used in semiconductor equipment to protect from corrosion and plasma arcing. The customer could expect longer part lifetime and lower operation expense through this special coating because of improving reliability of process and protecting parts from damages.

Productivity and cost competitiveness have been more and more important in semiconductor industry. Using special coating, the competitiveness could be much increased by protecting particle generation and damage of semiconductor production, and cost down by longer maintenance period.

Normally protective coating on parts is used thermal spray coating, anodizing process and sputtering but they have some limitation because it is difficult to coat uniformly on complicated and micro-shaped products by those methods. However ALD process could solve that problem.

Complex shaped shower heads and electro static chucks in the equipment using etching and dry cleaning process with corrosive gases as well as plasma, could be expected to apply ALD process. Because shower heads have a lot of fine holes and ESCs have wafer lift pin holes so those products couldn’t be coated uniformly by CVD and PVD methods. Therefore ALD might be very essential for special coating for these products.

ALD Al2O3 coating to protect part damage is used normally because Al2O3 process has already been confirmed in many application area. ALD Y2O3 will be studied actively for the next protective coating because it has much more anticorrosive property than ALD Al2O3.

This supplied equipment, Lucida GSH500, applied NCD’s creative high throughput and large area ALD technology could load multi semiconductor products at the same time and run uniform ALD coating. NCD will keep our best to develop the more competitive ALD technology and equipment to expand various new application fields in the future.

<Lucida GSH500>

Innovative remote plasma source for atomic layer deposition for GaN devices

Oxford Instruments and TU Eindhoven present results from the new Atomfab(TM) Remote Plasma ALD system for high-quality dielectric films. This could enable GaN normally off high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs).

Innovative remote plasma source for atomic layer deposition for GaN devices

Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A 39, 062403 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1116/6.0001318

High-quality dielectric films could enable GaN normally off high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs). Plasma atomic layer deposition (ALD) is known to allow for controlled high-quality thin-film deposition, and in order to not exceed energy and flux levels leading to device damage, the plasma used should preferably be remote for many applications. This article outlines ion energy flux distribution functions and flux levels for a new remote plasma ALD system, Oxford Instruments Atomfab™, which includes an innovative, RF-driven, remote plasma source. The source design is optimized for ALD for GaN HEMTs for substrates up to 200 mm in diameter and allows for Al2O3 ALD cycles of less than 1 s. Modest ion energies of <50 eV and very low ion flux levels of <1013 cm−2 s−1 were found at low-damage conditions. The ion flux can be increased to the high 1014 cm−2 s−1 range if desired for other applications. Using low-damage conditions, fast ALD saturation behavior and good uniformity were demonstrated for Al2O3. For films of 20 nm thickness, a breakdown voltage value of 8.9 MV/cm was obtained and the Al2O3 films were demonstrated to be suitable for GaN HEMT devices where the combination with plasma pretreatment and postdeposition anneals resulted in the best device parameters.

Image of the Oxford Instruments Atomfab system (a) used in this work. A conceptual schematic (b) of the plasma source with powered (light gray) and grounded (dark gray) surfaces indicated. This plasma source was also put on a testbed system (c), which was used for the ion measurements and OES, the RFEA for probing the ion energy, and the flux was placed at the wafer level. Besides the RFEA, the testbed system was designed to allow for a range of optical diagnostics in the future (d).

Growth per cycle for ALD of Al2O3. Data are given as a function of precursor (a) and plasma (b) dose times and the respective purge times (c) and (d) at 300 °C. Single and double exponential curve fits serve as a guide to the eye.

ALD Webinar on Coatings for Electronic Implants

Tune into Picosun's webinar on Thursday 16th December 2021, 4PM CET, to discuss the benefits of ALD compared to the conventional coating methods used in electronical implants!

 

LINK: ALD – the perfect thin film coating technology for electronical implants (pmi-live.com)

Digital healthcare has seen a tremendous development during past years with implantable electronics being part of ever-increasing number of treatment plans for patients. Consequently, need for advanced medical devices is rapidly expanding with ever tightening requirements as increasing number of complex therapeutic devices are implanted on the most sensitive areas of the body such as brain, spine, heart and eyes.

To ensure long lifetime and to reduce potential side effects in such environment, particular attention needs to be paid to the protective and biocompatible coating providing hermetic sealing, structural integrity and corrosion resistance to protect the device from the detrimental impact due to human body environment and to prevent the device releasing harmful substances to the surrounding tissue. The perfect protective coating therefore needs to be a biocompatible, pinhole-free barrier capable of uniformly coating devices with widely varying sizes and shapes to render them inert towards human body and vice versa, for decades after implantation.

Traditional thick film coating methods such as CVD, PVD or parylene tend to have limited utility on one or more of the requirements above. Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) technology allows fabrication of ultra-thin, highly uniform and conformal material layers of exact thickness to atomic level and chemical composition on a variety of substrates, including highly temperature-sensitive organic materials. The technology was originally brought into large scale use by the semiconductor industry but has after that been applied to a variety of applications, including the latest MedTech innovations. Using ALD as the coating method for electronical implants improves patient safety as well as ensures longer lifetime and improved reliability for the implant.

Picosun’s ALD solutions have been in production for years at various medical industries including electronical implant protection. The coatings have been tested and proven to be non-cytotoxic, biocompatible, and to have antibacterial or bioactive function.

Join our webinar to learn more how ALD will revolutionize the MedTech industry, especially in the field of electronical implants, and create added value and competitive edge to your products. We will present the latest results on the superior hermeticity of our ALD encapsulants as a protective barrier against human tissue fluid. We have proven results on suppression of bacterial growth and ultra-low levels of bacterial endotoxins, surpassing even the strictest requirements of implant industries.

Key Learning Objectives

The benefits of ALD compared to the conventional coating methods used in electronical implants

Practical examples how Picosun’s biocompatible, hermetic ALD encapsulant coatings can improve the operational reliability, lifetime and safety of electronical implants