Site: Canon Inc.
5-1 Morinosato-Wakamiya
Kanagawa 243-01, Japan

Date Visited: September 29, 1993

Report Author: S. Jacobsen

ATTENDEES

JTEC:

S. Jacobsen
R. Muller
C. Uyehara

HOSTS:

Dr. Ichiro Endo Director
Dr. Minami General Manager
Dr. Nakagiri Senior General Manager
Dr. Hirai Senior Engineer

NOTES

The JTEC panel's hosts were kind and made extensive presentations. In addition, they provided team members with a tour of their facilities. Unfortunately, due to the limited time allowed for each site visit, panelists were only able to see the basement and roof floors of the facility. The facilities observed were excellent. There was apparently sufficient funding to meet their needs.

Canon's gross sales are approximately ¥10 billion, with 80 percent of sales in business machines and 20 percent in cameras.

Five areas of interest were discussed during the presentations. The first was advanced materials and super lattices. Work in this area included Langmuir Blodgett films (LBF), gallium arsenide (GaAs), superfine particles, and superconductivity. The second area discussed was optical systems, which included optoelectrons, multimedia, and local area nets (LAN). The third area was nanometer scale systems. Canon has efforts in scanning tunneling microscopy, AFM, and MM. Another area of interest was E-beam lithography, which included work on sources and optics. The final area discussed was studies in bioremediation, which was aimed at disposal of used produce, ecology maintenance, and environment controls.

Strategies were discussed for three areas:

1. Materials: piezoelectric materials, LBF, superconductivity, and gal areas
2. Process: photo and E-beam lithography, bonding, etching, and deposition
3. Packaging: hybrid, monolithic, and chip mounting.

It is anticipated that Canon's efforts will lead to device design in the areas of sensors, actuators, and systems.

Canon representatives emphasized the fact that a very important issue was technomix to obtain intelligent MEMS, not just direct work on silicon micromachining alone. They also noted that MEMS were too small for business machines, but would be adequate for sensors.

Canon has established ten development targets:

1. X-ray exposure stepper, which is being constructed in a basement lab
2. Langmuir Blodgett films
3. Systems to allow recycling of products such as toner cartridges
4. Microfluidics for sensor and fluid processing systems
5. Solar cells -- amorphous silicon systems based on their past work with amorphous Silicon. They mentioned problems with recycling. Canon is engaged in a joint project with an American company.
6. Biotechnology
7. Piezoelectric actuation systems
8. Si to Si fusion bonding
9. Anodic bonding was discussed, but in the context of residual strain problems.