Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) and Spectrum Sciences Inc. (SSI), a woman-owned small business in Santa Clara, CA, entered into a CRADA partnership and developed process tooling that will help semiconductor manufacturers produce future high speed integrated circuits. The existing ion implanters could not fabricate the creation of sub-100nm junctions that are needed to produce very shallow semiconductor junctions.

The Plasma Immersion Ion Implanter (PI3) system uses novel, state of the art plasma process components previously invented at LBL. SSI is currently developing two variations of this system for world-wide use. The PI3 system, unlike conventional ion implanters, has only a few components and can be manufactured at a fraction of the cost of current ion implanters. This simple design, coupled with the small foot print, produces lower processing expenses and a tool that costs less to operate. The future world-wide need for ultra-shallow junctions will create a high demand for this tool-thus creating new jobs for the semiconductor tooling industry. The world-wide market for this tool is about $500M and at least 100 manufacturing jobs will be developed during the production of this new process tool.