Wales-based Trikon Technologies has secured funding from the UK Government to develop Broad Ion Beam Deposition (BIBD) technology for 300-mm Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory (MRAM) manufacture. The funding will be for up to 50 percent of the total estimated 18-month project value equivalent to $8.5 million. Although IBD has been successfully used to build small volumes of MRAM devices in the past, it has not yet been scaled to a mass production 300-mm process.
The award is part of the first to be allocated under the UK’s £93 million Micro and Nanotechnology Manufacturing Initiative (MNTI) launched in 2003. This recognises that the size of the global nanotechnology market could well reach $1.4 trillion by 2011/12.
MRAM technology was first developed in the 1990s, and recently Motorola and Infineon have announced the start of prototype production. MRAM non-volatile memories are likely to displace Flash memory in the medium term, and possibly even DRAM replacement in the longer term. NanoMarkets LC forecast that the market for MRAM will be $5.4 billion by 2008.
MRAM devices comprise two ferromagnetic layers separated by thin insulating layers with binary information stored on controllable directions of magnetisation. Because these devices will be built from stacks of multiple thin films only nanometers thick, fabricators will need equipment capable of depositing layers with exact control of quality, thickness and smoothness.
BIBD is also said to be preferable to alternative processing methods such as magnetron sputtering approaches due to its independent control of ion energy and flux, which is said to maintain critical film properties.