industry news
Subscribe Now

Nanoplas Announces Revolutionary Dry-Etching Technology Enabling Unlimited Selectivity at 20nm Node and Beyond

ST-ÉGRÈVE, France – March 14, 2013 – Nanoplas, a global supplier of plasma processing equipment to the semiconductor industry, today announced a new dry-etch process offering virtually unlimited etch selectivity for removing dielectric films on microprocessors and memories at high throughput.

Nanoplas’s new Atomic-Layer Downstream Etching (ALDE®) processing allows etching rate and selectivity to be controlled independently, which provides virtually unlimited selectivity. Based on the company’s new inductively coupled plasma (ICP) source, ALDE® features atomic-layer control at wafer-surface level. 

“Nanoplas’s Atomic-Layer Downstream Etching technology enables a new class of plasma-based etching and stripping processes at the 20nm technology node and beyond,” said Nanoplas CEO Gilles Baujon. “By allowing virtually unlimited selectivity, ALDE will alleviate many of the challenges engineers face in manufacturing next-generation devices – and enable them to achieve higher yields – because the process window will be larger and will easily integrate with existing pre- and post-ALDE steps. This is a huge benefit and driver for IC manufacturing. Bringing a new generation of devices to production is all about having sufficiently large process windows to generate high yields.”

ALDE® is positioned to replace current wet and dry techniques for removal of the many critical silicon-nitride spacer films in most advanced transistor-formation technologies.

Nanoplas, a green-tech company committed to reducing global use of industrial chemicals, expects to release a first ALDE® application for SiN etching in Q2.

About Nanoplas

Nanoplas is an equipment supplier to the semiconductor industry specialized in novel plasma process solutions for nanoelectronics. The company’s High Density Radical Flux (HDRF®) technology delivers sophisticated cleaning techniques for MEMS, 3D TSVs, power ICs, LEDs and III-V compounds. Its new ALDE® proprietary technology provides virtually unlimited etch-rate selectivity for sub-20nm node applications in CMOS fabrication. Both technologies offer high-efficiency, lower-cost, green alternatives for treating silicon wafer surfaces in next-generation IC devices. The company’s plasma-processing tools are used by leading microelectronics companies in North America, Europe and Asia. The company is based near Grenoble, in St-Égrève, France.

More information is available on our website, www.nanoplas.eu.

Leave a Reply

featured blogs
May 21, 2025
The term "brassed off"'”an informal British idiom meaning annoyed, fed up, or unhappy'”reflects a kind of period-specific British vernacular that has faded in modern times...

featured paper

How Google and Intel use Calibre DesignEnhancer to reduce IR drop and improve reliability

Sponsored by Siemens Digital Industries Software

Through real-world examples from Intel and Google, we highlight how Calibre’s DesignEnhancer maximizes layout modifications while ensuring DRC compliance.

Click here for more information

featured chalk talk

Wi-Fi Locationing: Nordic Chip-to-Cloud Solution
Location services enable businesses to gather valuable location data and deliver enhanced user experiences through the determination of a device's geographical position, leveraging specific hardware, software, and cloud services. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton and Finn Boetius from Nordic Semiconductor explore the benefits of location services, the challenges that WiFi based solutions can solve in this arena, and how you can take advantage of Nordic Semiconductor’s chip-to-cloud locationing expertise for your next design.
Aug 15, 2024
59,661 views