Brewer Science, Inc., and Arkema are pleased to announce the achievement of a production milestone in high-quality directed self-assembly (DSA) materials for use in semiconductor manufacturing.
Building on the partnership announced in October 2015, Brewer Science and Arkema have demonstrated pilot-scale production of DSA materials using Arkema's block copolymer (BCP) technology and Brewer Science's manufacturing expertise. This is a step toward bringing DSA from a research level up to mainstream semiconductor production. These initial pilot-scale DSA materials are based on polystyrene-polymethylmethacrylate (PS-PMMA) and are being used to support customer DSA process evaluations.
"We have progressed more quickly toward this milestone through our partnership with Arkema than either company could have done on their own" said Dr. Daniel Sullivan, director of Brewer Science’s semiconductor Research & Development department. Sullivan added, "We expect to similarly speed up customer process testing moving forward."
"In addition to its intrinsic flexibility, the BCP blending technology is demonstrating better performance with respect to defects and DSA kinetics. This further allows faster process development as a wider range of process parameters can be investigated by the blended BCPs" said Ian Cayrefourcq, Scientific Director of Arkema.
Both companies will continue to combine their strengths—more than 30 years of experience in advanced semiconductor materials and process solutions and more than 20 years in BCP technology and manufacturing—to make DSA a reality for next-generation lithography applications.