ATMI, Ovonyx to develop phase change memory materials

Phase change memory is considered to be an alternative to flash and DRAM devices, both of which will encounter increasing scaling challenges in the face of shrinking chip geometries, the companies say.

By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor -- Electronic News, 3/24/2008

Danbury, Conn.-based semiconductor manufacturing materials company ATMI Inc and Rochester Hills, Mich.-based phase change memory (PCM) technology developer Ovonyx Inc reported today they would work together to develop chemical vapor deposition (CVD) precursor materials and processes for use in commercial, high-volume manufacture of PCM products based on Ovonyx's technology.

The companies reminded that PCM is considered to be an alternative to flash and DRAM devices, both of which will encounter increasing scaling challenges in the face of shrinking chip geometries.

And according to Monterey, Calif.-based market research company Web-Feet Research Inc, trapped charge and PCMs are forecast to capture 30.7 percent of the $56.5 billion flash memory market in 2012. Contrastingly, trapped charge memories, primarily NROM, accounted for just 6.1 percent of the $23.7 billion flash memory market in 2006.

Doug Neugold, CEO of ATMI explained in a statement, “Ovonyx’s phase change memory technology offers the benefit of increased performance and relative ease of scaling to future smaller device nodes.”

“PCM is on the verge of commercial adoption using conventional deposition techniques; however, subsequent generation CVD deposition of phase change materials and delivery processes will further increase scalability and accelerate cost reductions,'' he continued.

“By applying our high productivity semiconductor precursor materials development, delivery, and deposition process expertise with Ovonyx's PCM knowledge, we believe that, together, we can accelerate the adoption of CVD phase change material deposition into high volume production,” Neugold added.

The agreement also covers certain cross-licensing of patents and technology between the companies.

Ovonyx was formed with the charter to commercialize its proprietary phase-change semiconductor memory technology originally invented at Energy Conversion Devices Inc, and the company said its nonvolatile memory technology allows faster write and erase speeds, higher cycling endurance, and better scaling performance with new generations of photolithography than conventional flash memory.

Last October, Ovonyx and Hynix Semiconductor inked a deal to develop phase change memory products that promise higher performance, higher density and array-addressing.

Also, in January 2007, Ovonyx teamed with Qimonda AG on a long-term cross license agreement for discrete memory products using Ovonyx’s and Qimonda’s patents and intellectual property relating to phase change random access memory technology.