RTP Solutions

Featured at Semicon West

AG Associates introduces the newest addition to its family of advanced RTP solutions, the STEAMpulse. The industry's first RTP system to leverage both catalytic and pyrogenic steam generation capabilities, STEAMpulse delivers a full range of high-quality thin and thick oxide films, as well as low temperature metal annealing capabilities for chipmakers' most challenging sub-quarter micron steam-based RTP applications.

STEAMpulse utilizes diluted steam as a process gas. Differing from competitive RTP steam-based systems, STEAMpulse creates its steam concentration outside the processing chamber rather than inside, ensuring extremely precise steam concentration levels. This accurate steam control, coupled with the system's ability to vary time and temperature during the processing cycle, enables repeatable, controlled, uniform oxide growth. The system's low temperature processing capability is particularly critical for emerging metal annealing applications due to thermal budget limitations during back-end processing.

STEAMpulse also incorporates a number of design features that greatly improve temperature uniformity and repeatability. The most important of these is emissivity insensitive temperature control throughout the processing cycle, regardless of the processing ambient, significantly enhancing process repeatability and yield. This results in temperature uniformity better than 1% and repeatability of less than 1% for thin oxide applications. Furthermore, the system's production-proven platform provides the industry's highest reliability rating according to the recent VLSI Research customer satisfaction survey, with mean-time-to-failure exceeding 400 hours.

With a smaller footprint than traditional vertical furnaces and competitive steam-capable RTP systems, STEAMpulse can further lower chipmakers' COO by minimizing the use of costly cleanroom space. AG Associates will be featuring STEAMpulse, along with other RTP systems from its suite of mix-and-match RTP solutions, at its booth #617 during SEMICON West 98, to be held July 13-15 at Moscone Center in San Francisco, Calif.

AG Associates, Contact: Anita Gat, AG Associates, Inc. 408-935-2002; Fax: 408-935-2705.