Toplink Innovation: An expertise for collaborative working environment and management process

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Toplink Innovation: An expertise for collaborative working environment and management process

Europe launches a consortium to develop a scalable 1-Mask MRAM

Bruxelles, September 05, 2005

  • EMAC Project: Budget of 4.2 M€ with EC contribution of 2.2 M€
  • Objective: Develop advanced CMOS devices using front-end embedded magnetic materials

The European Commission announced today the official launch of a Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) Specific Targeted Research aimed at developing advanced CMOS devices using front-end embedded magnetic materials. This technology will be applied to 65nm-scalable 1-Mask Magnetic Random Access Memories (MRAM).

"The three-year project is called EMAC, which stands for 'Embedded Magnetic Components', and is unique in that it will integrate MRAM directly at the heart of CMOS", explains project coordinator Professor François Arnaud D'Avitaya from CNRS in France. This will be achieved by combining innovative cell layout with breakthrough deposition techniques such as Electro Chemical Deposition(ECD) and MOCVD.  As microelectronics requires a multidisciplinary approach, EMAC brings together 9 European partners from a variety of backgrounds. Engineers, chemists and physicists from universities, research centres as well as specialist small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) will all work together on this project.

Toplink Innovation, a brand new French SME delivering High-Tech Consulting Services to innovative Organizations, will bring it's know-how to the Consortium in the field of collaborative working environment and management process: " Toplink Innovation's mission is to optimize the project management workflow, with a special focus on skills networking and outcomes valuation", says Alexandre LORENZI, founder and chairman.

Thanks to this combined expertise, the EMAC project hopes to bring innovations in the field of embedded MRAM fabrication, thus paving the way to 65nm node. Strategic objectives are to drastically reduce the complexity of MRAM processing and to ensure technology scaling-down. 

One of the other main purposes of this project is to develop a reliable stack of "ferromagnetic materials on thin oxide directly onto silicon", revealed the consortium in a statement. "The integration of ferromagnetic materials into front-end-of-line processing also brings challenges regarding contamination control. Semitool, with its advanced surface preparation technology, will bring expertise in cleaning in addition to industry-leading capabilities in ECD", said Sébastien Lagrange from Semitool. 

Antoine Filipe, chief executive officer of Spintron, an innovative design house, and another of the partners in the project, concluded that: 'EU support for projects like EMAC will help ensure we will be the winners at the end of the MRAM race, not just early front-runners.'

 

For more information about the project, please contact: