Electronics Gas Market to reach $8.0B by 2024 despite expected COVID-19 impacts

San Diego, CA, March 30, 2019: TECHCET announced that the semiconductor fabrication gases market is forecasted as net positive in revenue growth for Q1, despite COVID-19. Although economic uncertainties for the remainder of the year may slow growth, current indications from the materials supply-chain look like "business as usual."

"Suppliers say that orders are strong," summarizes TECHCET President and CEO Lita Shon-Roy. "However, concerns exist that fabs may start to stock-pile materials to mitigate the possibility of interruption, especially from US suppliers that are now in the throes of the COVID-19 spread."

One recent positive for chip fabs is helium availability, where non-semiconductor demand is expected to ease. Given the COVID19 situation, medical and recreational (party balloons) helium demand will decline, allowing for the current shortage in the semiconductor supply-chain to mitigate sooner than expected. Major new sources like Gazprom, Arzew, and Qatar are scheduled to finally come online later this year.

TECHCET is also tracking potential disruptions in raw materials for critical gases—e.g. germanium for GeH4 and GeF4, fluorspar for HF, tungsten for WF6—has been minimal, because many Chinese suppliers had prepared safety stock for the Lunar New Year break.

Air Liquide, Air Products, Linde, Messer, and SK Materials have all announced increases in global production of gases. The market for both bulk- and specialty-gases is forecasted to grow from US$5.4B in 2019 to US$8.0B by 2024, as shown in the figure below. However, uncertainties exist for 2020 where demand may soften as a result of a prolonged impact of COVID19 on global economies.

TECHCET’s Critical Materials Report™ on Electronic Gases includes market landscape analysis and company profiles of Air Liquide, Linde, TNSC-Matheson, Versum Materials, Air Products, Showa Denko, SK Materials, Air Water, Hyosung, Peric, Kanto Denka Kogyo, and more. To purchase Report go to: https://techcet.com/product/gases/ 

Chlorine-free titanium ALD precursor for leading edge semiconductor applications

Strem´s TDMAT ALD precursor as an attractive alternative to TiCl4

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) of titanium-based compounds has been a crucial process step in the modern semiconductor industry. Titanium nitride (TiN), due to its high electrical conductivity, has been in use as an inorganic anti-reflective coating for lithography, hard-mask for low-κ patterning, transistor gate electrodes, and diffusion barrier for tungsten contacts and Cu interconnects. Intel, in its 10nm, 3rd generation FinFET based technology node, employs a conformal Ti layer to wrap around source/drain diffusion regions to lower the spreading resistance (Link). Apple’s A11 bionic processor chip based on TSMC’s 10nm technology and Samsung’s Exynos 8895 processor chip based on its 10nm technology also incorporates Ti-based liners for tungsten contacts (Link). Globalfoundries and IBM Research investigated cobalt as a replacement of tungsten in the contacts for advanced semiconductor chips, and this process also incorporated a TiN barrier and a Ti liner (Link). TiN electrodes have also been promising for ferroelectric memory applications.

Figure 1:  Cross-section, perpendicular to the fin direction, TEM images on the 6T-SRAM area for (a) A11 and (b) Exynos8895. Images (c) and (d) are corresponding EDS mappings of (a) and (b), respectively. (Picture credit: MSSCORPS CO., LTD.)

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is also an attractive candidate for several thin-film applications, such as high-k material for electronic devices, anti-reflection optical coatings, biocompatible coatings, photocatalysis, and solar cells. Besides, TiO2 is also a constituent of several crucial multi-metal oxide systems, such as strontium titanates (STOs), barium strontium titanates (BSTs), and lead zirconium titanates (PZTs), for dielectric and ferroelectric applications.

The TiCl₄ precursor has been widely used to deposit Ti-based thin-films. However, due to severe Cl contamination, low growth per cycle, the corrosive nature of the reaction by-product (mainly HCl), high process temperature, and lower reactivity of TiCl_4, the industry switch over to metal-organic precursors is swiftly gaining traction.

Strem Chemicals, Inc., a leading fine chemicals supplier, headquartered in Newburyport, Massachusetts, USA, boasts a vast variety of metal-organic precursors for depositing superior Ti-based thin-films in semiconductor as well as non-semiconductor applications. TDMAT [tetrakis(dimethylamino)titanium(IV)] (Product Catalog Number: 93-2240, CAS Number: 3275-24-9) is one of the most preferred high-purity metal-organic precursors in Strem’s chemical offering. Highly volatile and reactive TDMAT offers adequate vapor pressure even at room temperature and enables low temperature (< 140°C) deposition of high-quality Ti-based thin-films.

Figure 2: TDMAT molecule

 

Since 1964, Strem Chemicals, Inc. has been serving its clients from academic, industrial and government research and development laboratories as well as commercial scale businesses in the pharmaceutical, microelectronic and chemical/petrochemical industries. Strem also provides custom synthesis (including high-pressure synthesis) and current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) services. With ISO 9001 certification for Quality Management System (QMS) standard and documentation, most of Strem’s products are of reliable high purity, typically 99%, with some at 99.9999% metals purity. Strem utilizes a comprehensive range of analytical techniques tailored to each product to ensure quality because the researchers typically rely on the supplier's quality procedures and documentation, which may be detrimental to a great research idea if poorly conducted. All of Strem's catalogs, since inception, have listed “Color and Form” for every product as primary indicators of quality.

More than fifty years of experience in manufacturing inorganic and organometallic chemicals has enabled Stem to expand its product offering of MOCVD, CVD, and ALD precursors. They are continually adding new products for this dynamic and exciting field. Strem’s product range includes:

Metal alkyls
Metal alkylamides
Metal amidinates
Metal alkoxides
Metal β-diketonates
Metal cyclopentadienyls
Metal halides
Volatile organometallics
Volatile metal carbonyls
Electronic grade chemicals
Single source precursors for mixed metal oxides

Product mentioned in this blog:

93-2240: Tetrakis(dimethylamino)titanium(IV), 99% TDMAT (3275-24-9)

Related Product Lines & Resources:
CVD & ALD Precursors
MOCVD, CVD & ALD Precursors Booklet
See full Material Science product line
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Researched, produced & written by BALD Engineering AB, Stockholm, 2020-01-25
Abhishekkumar Thakur, Jonas Sundqvist
www.baldengineering.com