The overall objective of the Project is the expedited commercialization of advanced coal-fired low-emission boiler systems. The Project is under budget and generally on schedule. The current status is shown in the Milestone Schedule Status Report included as Appendix A. Under Task 7--Component development and optimization, the CeraMem filter testing was completed. Due to an unacceptably high flue gas draft loss, which will not be resolved in the POCTF timeframe, a decision was made to change the design of the flue gas cleaning system from Hot SNO{sub x}{sup {trademark}} to an advanced dry scrubber called New Integrated Desulfurization (NID). However, it is recognized that the CeraMem filter still has the potential to be viable in pulverized coal systems. In Task 8-- Preliminary POCTF design, integrating and optimizing the performance and design of the boiler, turbine/generator and heat exchangers of the Kalina cycle as well as the balance of plant design were completed. Licensing activities continued. A NID system was substituted for the SNO{sub x} Hot Process.

A critical step in the fabrication of integrated circuits is the deposition of metal layers which interconnect the various circuit elements that have been formed in earlier process steps. In particular, columns of copper several times higher than the characteristic dimension of the circuit elements was needed. Features with a diameter of a few tenths of a micron and a height of about one micron need to be filled at rates in the half to one micron per minute range. With the successful development of a copper deposition technology meeting these requirements, integrated circuits with simpler designs and higher performance could be economically manufactured. Several technologies for depositing copper were under development. No single approach had an optimum combination of performance (feature characteristics), cost (deposition rates), and manufacturability (integration with other processes and tool reliability). Chemical vapor deposition, plating, sputtering and ionized-physical vapor deposition (I-PVD) were all candidate technologies. Within this project, the focus was on I-PVD.

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