14
IC INDUSTRY AWARDS WINNER 2008
Award: R&D Initiative
Company: Intermolecular
Initiative: Tempus High-Productivity Combinatorial (HPC)
Research & Development Technology
Website: www.intermolecular.com
Tempus High-Productivity Combinatorial
(HPC) Research & Development
Technology
O
ne of the grand parallel, Tempus tools greatly streamlines and silicon wafers during the R&D
challenges facing the the process of assessing new materials, process, providing further economies and
semiconductor industry refining options, and testing process reducing environmental impact. The
is the increasingly urgent need for the parameters and robustness. The Tempus Tempus HPC Workflow includes:
adoption of new materials and processing platform's combinatorial technology ● Fluids Processing Systems (F-series)
techniques into manufacturing. allows as many as 576 separate ● F-10, for formulation, discovery, and
Chipmakers have traditionally been very experimental sites to be created on a screening of fluid materials
conservative in making changes to their single silicon wafer. Each site can handle ● F-20, for primary and/or secondary
highly complex production processes, for a different formulation or set of screening
good reason - change brings risk - an processing parameters, enabling multi- ● F-30, for integration and scale-up
alteration in one area can have subtle variable data sets to be compiled screening
ripple effects that may not be in a fraction of the time it would take ● Informatics Information Processing
immediately apparent in others. using traditional one-at-a-time Software (S-Series)
development methods. As a result, new ● S-80, Web-based backbone for
The antidote to risk is knowledge - hard, materials are being qualified for integrating processing and
experimental data that demonstrates how production far faster, with higher characterization tools into a unified R&D
new materials perform under varying, confidence. workflow.
real-world, high-volume manufacturing
conditions. This data is the only thing that Tempus tools leverage this basic principle Additional modules, including a physical
can give chipmakers (and their suppliers) into greatly accelerated learning through vapor deposition (PVD) tool, are being
the confidence to bring new materials and an infrastructure of hardware and productised.
processes out of the laboratory and into software, including:
production. Until now, the process of ● Massively Parallel Processing, which By creating a purpose-built infrastructure
obtaining this data has been so automates and enables rapid for highly efficient materials development
time-consuming that it has become a execution of multiple experiments and volume manufacturing process
barrier to practical innovation. The ● Throughput-Matched Characterization, qualification Intermolecular's High-
problem is growing worse with each which includes fully automated metrology Productivity Combinatorial R&D platform
technology generation, as more and more and electrical-test infrastructure to has changed the semiconductor R&D
established techniques are made obsolete rapidly characterize the physical and equation. Tempus tools provide an
by shrinking device features. electrical performance of developed enabling technology that will help keep
technologies the chipmaking industry's record of
Intermolecular's Tempus High- ● Automation and Analysis Informatics improvement and innovation alive.
Productivity Combinatorial (HPC) software, a comprehensive, secure Web-
Research & Development Workflow has based system that serves as a backbone
changed the rules by accelerating the for integratin processing and
process of generating hard experimental characterization tools and the data they
data. By harnessing combinatorial generate into unified R&D workflows.
technology and performing dozens or Additional benefits include huge
hundreds of separate experiments in reductions in consumption of chemicals
www.euroasiasemiconductor.com IC Industry Award Winners 2008
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