  By Spencer Chin Silicon Strategies 08/10/2004, 5:00 $Ä ET MANHASSET, N.Y. — Silicon Genesis Corp. (SiGen) has developed a wafer-level uniaxial strained substrate technology, called Next-Generation Strain or NGS, that is reported to avoid the mobility degradation and the high defect levels associated with silicon germanium based biaxially strained silicon or strained silicon-on-insulator technology. Silicon Genesis (San Jose), a provider of silicon-on-insulator process technology, claims to be first company to successfully employ uniaxial strain technology on a wafer level rather than local transistor level. Transistor-level uniaxial strained substrate technology has been demonstrated by chip manufacturers such as Intel and Texas Instruments, with Intel already using the technology in its 90nm process.
"This new material offers the potential for significant mobility enhancements over silicon germanium-based biaxial strain wafer technologies and is compatible with local straining approaches since the strains are additive," said Francois J. Henley, president and chief executive of Silicon Genesis, in a statement. "It also features very low defect levels due to use of SiGen's proprietary low-temperature processing technology.
It can be directly integrated on silicon as an epi-like strained bulk wafer or on an insulator as a strained silicon-on-insulator wafer. " Henley added that the costs of producing uniaxial strained substrates are expected to be significantly lower than biaxial technologies because the process avoids the costly steps of growing and relaxing thick silicon-germanium layers. Silicon Genesis plans to pursue the development and commercialization of its Next-Generation Strain technology with a number of partners. 
