Applied NanoWorks Release Nano-Oxide Nano- Abrasives

Applied NanoWorks, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of PinnacleAF Nano-Oxides, a family of four oxide abrasives that deliver tight size distributions below 10nm in a water suspension.

Nano-abrasives are used in Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) processes for semiconductor integrated circuit manufacture. Smaller abrasive particle sizes enable the semiconductor industry to maintain quality control while shrinking the size of their chip designs in the drive to lower cost per computer chip.

“PinnacleAF Nano-Oxides establishes a new benchmark for slurry and pad production in the CMP market and is an important development for the newer chip fab technologies.” said Eric Burnett, president & CEO of Applied NanoWorks. “These production results are actual particle sizes, not the primary particle sizes commonly quoted in the industry.”

“As industry demands better performance from CMP technologies, high quality, smaller particle materials of controlled size distribution are critical.” Said Om Nalamasu, Director of Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Center for Integrated Electronics and a previous director of R&D at Bell Labs.

The Pinnacle AF Nano-Oxides are all below 10nm and include: Aluminum Oxide (Al₂O₃), Silicon Dioxide (SiO₂), Cerium Dioxide (CeO₂) and PinnacleAF Zirconium Dioxide (ZrO₂). All materials are available in a range of volumes starting at 100ml with a 20% loading.

According to Business Communications Corp, the CMP nanopowders market was well over $120M in 2003 and is growing at over 20% per year. The entire CMP market in the same year was estimated at over $440M.

“Our ability to produce amorphous and crystalline materials will give our partners a single source access to the best slurry materials available today.” CTO Partha Dutta, Phd, stated. “With our production platform well established, we will now focus on the increasing the value of our products for the CMP market.”

Posted June 25^th, 2004