New York hopes Albany 300-mm fab project elevates its chip industry status

ALBANY, N.Y. -- In the coming weeks, construction will begin on a new 300-mm wafer fab facility in the United States, and this time, Intel Corp. is not building it.

The advanced 300-mm fab line is part of Albany NanoTech, an ambitious project for the University at Albany, which is part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system.

Albany NanoTech aims to pull together public and private funding to support not only R&D in microelectronics, nanotechnology, optoelectronics, bioelectronics and telecommunications, but also training for the semiconductor workforce of the future and "tech-incubator" space for start-up companies.

"We want to be two to four generations ahead of the industry," said Alain E. Kaloyeros, a physics professor at the University of Albany. Kaloyeros heads up an umbrella organization for the project, called the University at Albany Institute of Materials (UAIM). Albany NanoTech is intended to serve as "a Switzerland" of pre-competitive research for the industry, helping chip makers establish technologies and processes "before they go to customers with new products," Kaloyeros added.

Currently, Albany NanoTech encompasses several programs and initiatives. Its facilities include a 200-mm wafer processing frontend, which was completed last year, and the new 300-mm fab. Construction on the 300-mm (12-inch) fab is slated to begin in September, and the facility is expected to be operational in 2003, said project managers.

To create greater awareness of the project, Albany NanoTech exhibited at last week's Semicon West trade show in San Francisco. Albany NanoTech is also one of the hosts for the Albany Symposium on Global Semiconductor Issues, a conference that will be held Sept. 10-12 in Lake George, N.Y., in the picturesque Adirondack Mountains.

During the spring, the University at Albany launched the School of Nanosciences and Materials to complement the UAIM, which covers a number of programs, including the New York State Center for Advanced Thin Film Technology (established in 1993). UAIM also covers the Energy and Environmental Technology Applications Center, the Microsystems Integration Laboratory (for applications in nanosystems and micro-electromechanical systems, or MEMS), the Public Protection Technology Applications Center (sensors for law enforcement), the Center for Nanosciences Workforce Training, the advanced computer modeling program for nanosystems and processes, and the business outreach and technology deployment program. In addition, Albany is one of the American universities involved in the National Interconnect Focus Center program managed by the Microelectronics Advanced Research Corp. (Marco), a whollyowned subsidiary of the Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC).

"We want this to be a national center for workforce training," said UAIM's Kaloyeros. "New York state companies are a top priority for us, but even New York state companies need a national network."

Building on work of consortia

With the existing 200-mm facility--which has $80 million worth of fab tools--and the new 300-mm fab, Albany NanoTech hopes to build on semiconductor technology developed by such industry and academic consortia as International Sematech, Europe's Inter-university Microelectronics Center (IMEC) and Japan's Semiconductor Leading Edge Technologies (Selete).

"Our emphasis complements what's been done," Kaloyeros said. For Albany NanoTech, that emphasis is "the technology, not the tool," he added.

IBM Corp. this spring contributed $100 million toward the construction of the 300-mm wafer prototyping facility, which is expected to cost $300 million. The state of New York contributed another $50 million toward that capital budget. The university has $250 million in funding lined up for the new fab, and "we're looking at a federal investment," Kaloyeros said. Federal funding sources may come from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Department of Energy or the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which funds programs involving workforce training.

The University at Albany will license equipment from IBM for the new facility under a three-year agreement between the university and IBM. In return, IBM will have access to the 300-mm wafer facility for its R&D projects. IBM last year announced a $2 billion plan to construct a 300-mm fab in East Fishkill, N.Y.

The company also will have internship slots for 20 Albany students to study at various IBM facilities. And, IBM will support Albany's research activities through grants and equipment donations in its University Partnership and Shared University Research programs.

In addition to licensing production equipment to Albany NanoTech, IBM's Microelectronics Division will provide "guidance" to the university center on other equipment purchases, Kaloyeros said.

IBM recruited 50 graduates from this year's senior class at the University at Albany, according to Kaloyeros -- "a pipeline of students we hope to increase," he added. "We're not just targeting IBM, but the whole SIA customer base."

'Ballroom' cleanroom planned

The 300-mm facility will have a total of 208,000 square feet of space, including a class 100 cleanroom with a "ballroom" configuration measuring 35,000 square feet. Of that 35,000 square feet, 22,000 square feet will be devoted to R&D, while 8,000 square feet is assigned for product demonstration and prototyping, and 5,000 square feet to workforce training.

"We're not putting in a full 0.10-micron line," Kaloyeros noted. "That's not our job as a university, and not what our customers want."

"The long-term dream" of Albany NanoTech, Kaloyeros said, is developing "a fully integrated resource" for a variety of disciplines, or "one-stop shopping" for R&D, education and technology deployment -- facilities with a price tag of up to $1 billion, including the $300 million new fab. Asked if Albany NanoTech can command the funding for all this building and equipping, Kaloyeros responded, "Absolutely."

The staff of Albany NanoTech has their work cut out for them, raising awareness of the project. Representatives of International Sematech and the SRC declined to comment on the project, although they expressed interest in working with the project participants. "We're hoping to start conversations with consortia," Kaloyeros said.

While the project has ambitious goals, it is difficult to gauge its impact on the chip industry, beyond the expected contributions to IBM, said analyst Risto Puhakka, the vice president of operations at VLSI Research Inc. in San Jose.

"The interesting part is that the State of New York is part of it," Puhakka noted. Few other states in the country have gone that far.

Several states have sought high-tech development, mostly providing tax abatements and other financial incentives to lure wafer fabs and their related supply infrastructure. The state of Georgia, for example, is even making small equity investments in start-ups under its "Yamacraw" initiative to encourage development of broadband communications technology in the Peach State.

Puhakka said the key point with the Albany project is that IBM has the capital resources to help fund the effort at a time when most leading chip makers are slashing capital spending and keeping R&D spending to a minimum. "Look at how IBM has done in the downturn," he observed. "Their investments in the last 10 years are nicely paying off now."

For the first quarter of 2001, IBM reported OEM revenues from microelectronics were up 117% from a year earlier.

Whether IBM Microelectronics or the broader semiconductor industry is able to take advantage of Albany NanoTech's capabilities, there is a strong emphasis on workforce training in the Albany project. The university is building another facility, with up to 118,000 square feet of space, which will be adjacent to the 300-mm fab, and connected by a second-floor walkway.

This building will help house the new School of Nanosciences and Materials -- "the first of its kind in the United States," Kaloyeros said -- along with training facilities and up to 45,000 square feet of incubator space that can house a "tech accelerator."

"Existing companies, large and small, are interested in forming consortia to look at high-risk, high-payoff areas," Kaloyeros said of the incubator/accelerator space. The companies in the accelerator would be "in addition to small companies we would incubate," he noted.

While community colleges around the country offer training in semiconductor manufacturing, "they don't have training in a cleanroom," Kaloyeros asserted. "We have agreements in place with community colleges in New York for hands-on training in the cleanroom." Through using the facilities of Albany NanoTech, semiconductor companies "could save thousands of dollars a head on training new employees for the fab," he added.

Albany NanoTech will also offer "electronic classroom" training with courses taught over the Internet, the professor said. The financial support for this would come from a combination of federal and state grants.

And Albany NanoTech will take a new tack for universities by allowing semiconductor industry suppliers to demonstrate and prototype new products in its cleanroom, according to Kaloyeros. These could include such products as air filters for clean rooms, mini-environments for installing in front of wafer processing tools, fab automation software and new technology for flow control and flow management, he said.

"It's a checkerboard R&D approach," Kaloyeros commented. "There will be short loops within the big cleanroom."

Albany NanoTech "is leveraged with significant state funding that is not available to consortia," he added.

The Albany project certainly has a lot on its plate, in terms of programs, but observers believe the jury is still out on how the semiconductor industry will engage with the project in the future.

Jeff Dorsch is an Austin, Tex.-based contributing editor to Semiconductor Business News.