Applied Materials overcomes challenges to etching 3D NAND Flash

As with a lot of computer technology, NAND memory chips are getting smaller and smaller. Where before chips were manufactured at a 150nm process, we’ve currently reached the ability to produce NAND memory cells at 19nm. Reducing the size of the NAND chips makes them cheaper but comes with the disadvantage of less reliability as the data density also increases. Simplified you can think of it like this: a scratch on an surface of a square millimeter with 1000 items will cause more items lost than when there are only 10 items on the same surface.

Still NAND technology is advancing and besides making cells smaller, there is also 3D-NAND where multiple two-dimensional arrays of memory cells are layered vertically on a single substrate and therefor increasing bit density without necessarily decreasing the size of each individual cell. This requires very precise machines and Applied Materials reports a breakthrough in that. NAND chips are made by etching into a material, and by making their etching very, very precise , Applied Material has overcome a lot of problems which makes 3D-NAND possible.

This is good news for us, as it will make sure SSD drives will become cheaper and will be able to get to higher capacities. Applied material claims that their technology could be scalable into petabytes of data. Want to read more on 3D-NAND technology? Then read this PDF.