Singulus Technologies and the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) of the University at Albany announced a $12 million partnership that will involve co-development of MRAM technologyies and processes for Tunnel Magneto Resistance (TMR) materials. Singulus and CNSE aim to deliver a critical technical need required to establish a fully installed, multi-equipment MRAM tool set capable of module and integrated processing for an MRAM development program.

More specifically, they will develop innovative deposition techniques (on 300mm equipment) for TMR materials and material stacks critical for advanced technology nodes. The research will focus on developing techniques to enable improvements in film deposition rates, deposition uniformity, and mechanical, electrical and magnetic properties, as well as advancing TMR processes and applications.

Tohoku University plans to open a new program for international academic-industrial collaboration on integrated electronics R&D in spring 2013. Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL) announced it will participate in the STT-MRAM research program, and will also develop manufacturing equipment technology for the program.

TEL has been collaborating with the university on Spintronics memory technology since December 2011, and apparently are also developing STT-MRAM STT-MRAM production equipment technology and integration technology together.

Researchers from A*STAR have posted an interesting study about STT-RAM production process. In particular, they say that it's already known that the annealing temperature controls the change in resistance between parallel and anti-parallel magnetizations. The higher the annealing temperature, the better larger the resistance change - but if the temperature is too high it drops.

The researchers now looked at an entire cell, and found out that the annealing temperature that yielded the maximum resistance variation exceeded the temperature necessary for maximum thermal stability.

A couple of weeks ago we reported that Nanounity has signed a Sales & Marketing agreement with Mountain Scientifics (MSI) to promote the MSI QSW-Gen3 Quasi-Static Wafer tester product for STT-MRAM devices. Today Nanounity says that they have received an order for a QSW-Express STT-RAM Wafer level Prober from a leading semiconductor equipment manufacturer.

Nanounity says it has signed a Sales & Marketing agreement with Mountain Scientifics (MSI). Nanounity will promote the MSI QSW-Gen3 Quasi-Static Wafer tester product and associated accessories such as a patented magnet & probe card arrangement with In-Plane and Perpendicular Fields for the testing and characterization of STT-RAM devices and HDD recording heads.

The QSW-Gen3 (initially released in 1999) is the first and only commercially available tester for STT-RAM and HDD production.

MicroSense says that they see an increase in orders for its MRAM magnetic metrology systems. MicroSense's metrology tools characterize the magnetic properties of multi-layer wafers used in the development and manufacturing of perpendicular MRAM. They offer a 300mm Polar Kerr (out-of-plane) MRAM metrology system, the KerrMapper (in-plane) tool and Vibrating Sample Magnetometers (VSM) for MRAM makers.

The company has been selling Gen-1 MRAM metrology tools since 2004. They say that now, with the recent developments in STT-MRAM, they see a number of new MRAM tool orders.

Integral Solutions International (ISI) released today a new wafer-level analyzer for STT-MRAM characterization, the WLA-3000. They say that this is the world's first commercially available and fully integrated solution to address the needs of production level testing of STT-MRAM wafers.

The WLA-3000 includes proprietary magnets, pulse generator module, probecard interfaces, and measurement electronics that were all specifically developed by ISI. ISI says they already shipped several of these testers which have now been qualified for high volume production testing of STT-MRAM devices.

Veeco produced a nice ad showing their NEXUS Ion Beam Deposition System. This tool is "ideal for MRAM applications" and can also be used for read/write heads used in hard disk drives:

Singulus Technologies announced it has recieved two new orders for TIMARIS vacuum deposition systems. TIMARIS systems can be used for MRAM development or research, it's not clear what will those new systems be used for. Singulus did say that they already received orders for four TIMARIS systems in 2012 in different configurations. The total order value for 2012 is apparently over €13 million.

Singulus Technologies says that in the past couple of months they have noticed "increased activities in the area of MRAM memory by large semiconductor companies". The company expects MRAM development to progress and they consider themselves to be in an exceptional starting position for the upcoming growth market of MRAM memory. Their TIMARIS vacuum coating machines are already used by customers to develop MRAM wafers.