ADCS Launches Barium Strontium Titanate Development Project

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded a multi-million dollar contract to ADCS (Austin, TX), to develop barium strontium titanate (BST)-related ferroelectric materials. ADCS is the semiconductor materials and delivery systems business of ATMI Inc. With the funds, BST materials will be developed with a new combination of high dielectric tunability and low dielectric loss for radar-based applications. Researchers at Raytheon Corp. and North Carolina State University will also be involved in the project.

ADCS has just completed its participation in a multi-year, multi-million dollar dynamic random access memory (DRAM) consortia. The consortia developed materials and processing technology to demonstrate a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method for depositing BST capacitor thin films for 1-Gb DRAM cells. Today's mainstream DRAM size—64 Mb—holds approximately 3,355 pages of text. A 1-Gb DRAM would hold more than 50,000 pages of text.

Many think that BST could significantly reduce device complexity and the associated manufacturing cost of the storage node in high-density advanced DRAMs. BST has been lauded as a key material since the DRAM consortium reported achieving the necessary dielectric properties for 1-Gb memories for device dimensions of 0.18 µm. This achievement occurred two years ago. Recent news from such companies as IBM, Hitachi, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Siemens, Mitsubishi and others has validated the DRAM consortium's BST achievements.

ADCS provides semiconductor thin-film materials and processes for current and next-generation integrated circuits. ATMI provides products and services for manufacturing semiconductor devices including thin-film materials and delivery systems marketed through ADCS; environmental equipment marketed through EcoSys; thin-film deposition services marketed through Epitronics; and sub-atmospheric gas delivery systems marketed through NovaSource.

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