EVER SMALLER Shipley microelectronics applications lab is key to semiconductor interconnect line.

Using polymer technology from Rohm and Haas's Spring House, Pa., labs, Shipley says it has developed a semiconductor insulating material based on a novel pore-forming approach.

Semiconductors traditionally have used silicon dioxide as a circuit line insulator, but SiO₂'s dielectric constant--or k value--of 4.2 isn't sufficient to shield the thinner lines in the latest generation of chips.

Shipley's product, called Zirkon, incorporates nanometer-sized polymer spheres in a matrix of methyl silsesquioxane. Upon heating, the polymer disappears, leaving tiny air-filled insulating spaces.

Mark Thirsk, a Shipley marketing manager, says the new pore-making technique is simpler than that used by competitors and creates smaller holes. Depending on the degree of porosity, k values can range from 2.6 to below 2.0, he says.

Shipley is a newcomer to the low-k arena. Companies such as Dow Chemical, with its SiLK aromatic hydrocarbon, and Novellus, with its Coral carbon-doped silicon oxide, have essentially locked up the market for the 0.10-µm-line chips that will be coming out in the next two years. Shipley, however, is targeting the emerging sub-0.10-mm market, where Thirsk claims competing materials have serious drawbacks.

The low-k business is still in its infancy. Michael Corbett, business manager at the Little Falls, N.J.-based consulting firm Kline & Co., predicts that sales of all low-k materials will total nearly $300 million worldwide by 2005, up from just $40 million this year.

Although Shipley is off to a late start, Corbett points out that it can package Zirkon with technologies it already offers the semiconductor industry, such as photolithography, chemical mechanical planarization, and copper metallization. "Shipley has a lot going on in semiconductor interconnects," he says.

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