Future innovations
At ASM, we are committed to continuously developing new innovations in process and equipment technologies to meet our customers’ needs.
The semiconductor industry is driven by a challenging goal – to double the number of transistors on a “chip” every 18 to 24 months. Our aim is to help the industry continue to meet this goal through our continued investment in R&D. We now have to respond to the additional challenge of shorter product life cycles and demands for increased functionality for smart electronic devices. This requires us to be even more closely integrated with our customers’ technology roadmaps. Helping them to keep offering greater computing power at a lower cost, enabling applications that will create a better future for everyone.
MOVING AWAY FROM LITHOGRAPHY
Lithography has been used for roughly 40 years to keep the industry on track with Moore’s Law but we now believe that scaling will increasingly require new materials and 3D technologies.
MATERIAL BENEFITS
One of our core beliefs is that new materials will be increasingly used to solve industry roadmap challenges. As a world-leading deposition equipment supplier, we will be relied upon to develop the methods to lay down these new material layers in order to create the basic components on semiconductors.
The ASM-pioneered ALD deposition method will be a key focus area for us. It delivers inherent performance benefits in controlling chemical composition, purity and deposition coverage. Epitaxy is another technology focus for us because of the need we anticipate for new crystalline semiconductor materials.
3D SOLUTIONS
By using 3D, manufacturers will be able to integrate systems improving both functionality and form factors while 3D processor/memory stacking enables improvements in speed, cost and power consumption. As the industry shifts from working in a single plane to 3D, our ALD deposition technology and our Plasma Enhanced ALD (PEALD) will increasingly be required to deliver the precision needed to create the basic components.
450MM WAFERS
The semiconductor manufacturing industry is now in the early stages of moving to 450mm – a new and larger diameter silicon wafer. This will require new equipment to support the larger wafers while meeting the advanced technology needs of next generation devices.
We are committed to finding innovative solutions to the industry challenges facing the 450mm generation in the same way that we have done for previous industry challenges since we were founded in 1968.
