Chip Fabrication Facilities
NanoFab 200

200mm Wafer MicroSystems Pilot-Prototype Facility

Corporate planners today seek flexible manufacturing solutions and multi-purpose facilities using industry standard fabrication technology. CNSE supports the acceleration of nanotechnology commercialization by developing workable prototypes that are integrated with prevailing semiconductor fabrication flows by using 200mm and 300mm wafer process technology. As a result, over 250 companies located throughout the world currently work with CNSE to incorporate nanotechnology into commercial applications in nanoelectronics-related industries.

A case in point is a joint technology commercialization program with Infrared Components Corporation (ICC) to commercialize a microsystem- based infrared imager technology. In this case, the traditional Vanadium Oxide (VOx) microbolometer technology was incompatible with the traditional CMOS technology, making it difficult to produce a low cost infrared imager. The key to ICC’s cost reduction plan was to avoid the use of materials which were incompatible with commercial foundries, so that a captive foundry was not required and production could be scaled-up to larger wafer sizes.

The detector fabrication process is being transferred to the 200mm wafer MicroSystems development line housed at CNSE. A uniform amorphous silicon array development program is underway, and, when combined with a read-out integrated circuit, will yield state-of-the-art monolithic uncooled infrared focal plane arrays which have the capability of instant on operation. Combining the low cost arrays with mature camera designs is expected to yield rapid commercial success in a variety of markets including homeland security, firefighting, automotive and defense.