GOLDEN, Colo.-- Isonics Corp. here today announced that it has delivered its silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer products to a "leading semiconductor manufacturer," of which is reportedly Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
Isonics did not identify the customer for its silicon-28 Thin-Film SOI products. Last year, however, the Golden-based company disclosed that AMD is studying the potential benefits of using silicon-28 wafer substrates to produce microprocessor products (see July 24 story ).
The wafers delivered to this customer were not manufactured in Isonics' thick-film SOI facility, but in cooperation with an existing thin-film SOI wafer supplier.
"While SOI wafers are known to reduce power requirements for devices, heat has been a large concern for certain applications and is expected to become an even larger, more critical consideration as chip manufacturers continue to push for more performance," said Stephen J. Burden, Isonics' vice president of semiconductor materials.
"Semiconductor manufacturers, eager to design the optimum thermal/electrical solution for their specific device, are becoming aware of the outstanding performance offered by the marriage of our high thermal conductivity silicon-28 and the film SOI wafer technology," he added.
Isotopically purified silicon-28 has 60% higher thermal conductivity than natural silicon, allowing for reductions in the self heating of circuits made with natural SOI wafers. Incorporating silicon-28 into SOI wafers made using either oxygen implantation or layer transfer technologies requires no change in the established manufacturing processes developed for these SOI wafers.
