Applied dedicates RTP with Vantage: 300mm RTP offering smaller and faster than Centura tool - Capital Equipment - Applied Materials Inc

Electronic News, Sept 23, 2002 by Jeff Chappell

The 300mm market may not explode in the second half of 2002 as many hoped, but the market is still growing, and it's no surprise that Applied Materials Inc. continues to move to capture market share.

Last week Applied unveiled a two-chamber rapid thermal processing (RTP) tool for 300mm applications, called the Radiance Vantage tool. What's significant about the tool is not the technology, which Applied has had in the field in various guises for several years, but the timing and the fact that Vantage is not a cluster tool but a dedicated RTP tool.

Unlike Applied's previous Radiance RTP tools--modules built around its Centura cluster tool platform -- Vantage is simply two RTP chambers linked directly to a factory interface and track robot. The result is a much smaller, simpler, high-throughput tool with a footprint of 51 square feet. Applied said it has squeezed throughput in excess of 100 wafers per hour from the tool.

Applied has had Radiance RTP modules out in the field since 1997. "We're using modules that are already out there in our installed base today, so there is very little new technology being introduced," said Ben Bierman, managing director of Applied's thermal systems and modules division, part of its transistor systems group.

As for the timing, second- and third-tier chipmakers may be putting the chill on 300mm expansion, but the early adopters must be going forward. Applied, citing data from Gartner Dataquest, expects 300mm to grow from 36 percent of all wafer fab equipment spending this year to 45 percent in 2003.

Spending on 300mm tools will come in at $6.3 billion this year, up from $5.5 billion in 2001, and will top $9.9 billion in 2003, according to Applied and Dataquest. The company has no plans to introduce a dedicated 200mm RTP tool, opting to stick with Centura, and sees no demand for bridge tools, Bierman said.

"At 200mm we have a Centura platform that's mature and is really meeting all of our customers' needs," he said, adding that the percentage of 200mm RTP business will likely begin to decrease over time.

According to VLSI Research Inc., the 2001 total RTP market, where Applied dominates with 84 percent of the market, added up to $348 million and will more than double to $843 million by 2004. Sixty-five percent of that 2004 RTP market will comprise 300mm tool sales. Applied has already received orders for the Radiance Vantage from Japan, Korea and the United States, the company said.

"I think Applied's actually trying to win the cost-of-ownership battle and actually come up with, from an RTP standpoint, a tool that...can hit the dry anneal market," said Dean Freeman, senior analyst at Dataquest.

Feel It Hot, Hot, Hot

"This is much smaller than our Centura-based RTP systems and much simpler," Bierman said. This makes it ideal for processing steps such as ion implant anneals. "For these annealing steps ... there really are no benefits to having these other chambers or a transfer in a vacuum," he said.

Vantage has about half as many parts as a similar Centura configuration, and unlike a Centura RTP system, can be shipped in one piece, making for easier installation. Yet Vantage maintains Radiance's technical abilities, according to Applied. That includes a high sampling rate, measuring the temperature 100 times per second at seven different places on the wafer from the center to the edge, while ramping up in temperature at 250 degrees Celsius per second and cooling down at 90 decrees Celsius per second. The Radiance chamber has a temperature range of 300 to 1,200 degrees Celsius and can achieve oxygen levels of less than 1 part per million.

The Radiance chamber is extendible for ion implant or spike annealing through the 65nm node, and Applied is investigating a different type of chamber for that type of anneal for possible introduction at the 45nm node, Bierman said. For other applications, with the exception of tungsten salicide processing, Radiance is extendible to the 45nm node, he said.

200mm vs 300mm

Wafer Fab Equipment Spending

WFE Spending By Wafer Size ($B)

      300mm WFE spending  200mm WFE spending

2000          6%                 92%
2001         25%                 75%
2002         36%                 64%
2003         45%                 55%

Spending for 300mm wafer fab equipment (WFE) will likely almost double
from 25 percent of all equipment spending last year to 45 percent next
year.

SOURCE: APPLIED MATERIALS, DATAQUEST

Note: Table made from graph