Cabot MMD Breaks Ground On US CMP Slurry Plant
CMP slurries are used to polish semiconductor wafers and hard disk drive platters and magnetic heads. The plant will serve the North American market when it opens in the third quarter of 2000.
"We have been building capacity ahead of industry demand," says Cabot MMD VP/GM Matthew Neville. "This now allows us to expand slurry production to meet our US customers' growing needs for our products."
Cabot says the facility will initially employ 50 people. It will house multiple production lines, a quality assurance lab, and the infrastructure to support a 300% expansion. Among the polishing products slated for production are Semi-Sperse P1000 for polysilicon used in 256 megabit and faster DRAMs; Semi-Sperse W2585 for tungsten damascene devices with 0.18-micron and smaller geometries; and Lustra 2090 ultraslurry for high-capacity disk drive substrates.
The new facility is part of Cabot MMD's global expansion. In December 1999, it announced plans to expand CMP capacity by 150% in Japan. In May 1999, it added a new CMP line in Wales, UK, which doubled European capacity. It also boosted North American research capacity by 60% when it moved into its new Aurora headquarters, which it completed last September.
Cabot MMD is a division of Cabot Corp., a $1.7 billion Boston, MA, chemical company that specializes in surface modification of fine particle for automotive, industrial, construction, semiconductor, coatings, and inkjet color markets. The company also operates a liquefied natural gas business.
Edited by Alan S. Brown