aveni Announces Joint Development Agreement With Leading Semiconductor Equipment Company for Next-Generation Metallization

MASSY, FRANCE--(Marketwired - Sep 21, 2016) -  aveni, a leading provider of enabling metallization technologies for advanced damascene and 3D through silicon via applications, today announced it has entered into a joint development agreement (JDA) with a leading semiconductor equipment supplier. The JDA will cover the development of back-end-of-line metallization processes using aveni's chemistries in conjunction with the equipment supplier's electrochemical deposition (ECD) products for advanced logic at and beyond the 7nm node. All processes jointly developed during the JDA period will be used exclusively on the company's ECD equipment. Central to the development efforts will be removing the cobalt liner from copper interconnects to maximize device performance, as well as replacing tungsten with cobalt filling for local interconnects.

"This JDA is very important, as it will validate aveni's Electrografting (eG™) technology for next-node manufacturing," said Bruno Morel, CEO of aveni. "Specifically, it will demonstrate the capabilities of our wet chemical technology for advanced nodes while simultaneously ensuring the shortest time to production for our customers."

Chip manufacturers currently use nanometer-scale copper wires as interconnects to electrically transmit signals within devices. As device geometries shrink, so do the wires, which increases line resistance and reduces device speed.

"Removing the thin cobalt liner from copper interconnect stacks improves device performance, and at the same time provides attractive cost benefits," said Frédéric Raynal, CTO of aveni. "In the case of local interconnects, or metal zero, filling with conventional CVD tungsten -- due to its conformal nature -- has become problematic at smaller geometries. Cobalt ECD for the metal zero layer is under active development as a suitable replacement for CVD tungsten."

About aveni
aveni offers novel metallization technology that enables the future of semiconductor manufacturing, today. Our solutions overcome the roadblocks of existing deposition technologies to enable damascene and through silicon via metallization at the 20nm node and below. Our Electrografting technology is a wet, electrochemical-based process that enables the growth of extremely high-quality thin films of various types, and is compatible with existing processing equipment. For more information, please visit www.aveni.com.