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SEZ's AeroSonic™ Drying Technology Promises Instant Productivity Gains
Chiba, Japan (SEMICON Japan), December 3, 2002 — In its strive to become the single-source supplier for surface preparation solutions, the SEZ Group (SWX: SEZN) unveils an important addition to its product portfolio at the opening day of this year's SEMICON Japan (booth #5-A302). SEZ's new AeroSonic™ drying technology, which can be integrated into wet process systems or used as a stand-alone dryer, will bring customers immediate productivity gains compared to competitive products through shortened cycle times, increased uptime, and the ability to dry half-pitch cassettes. The AeroSonic™ technology also dries high aspect ratio structures and fragile substrates without breakage while eliminating water spots with near particle-neutral performance at 100 nanometers.
The AeroSonic™ technology significantly shortens cycle-time and increases throughput by dynamically varying process parameters during the cycle and controlling the transition time between process set points. The ability to dry double the number of substrates in a half-pitch cassette nearly doubles the substrate throughput per cycle. The AeroSonic™ process is motionless, which eliminates the potential for wafer breakage and the resulting equipment downtime. The AeroSonic™ products have so few moving parts that virtually no scheduled downtime is needed, adding significant productivity gains over competitive products.
The new AeroSonic™ drying technology complements SEZ's immersion products (wet benches), which include its recently introduced A3 300 mm immersion tool. "The AeroSonic™ product line adds revenue streams for SEZ and, more importantly, has freed SEZ from its reliance on third party vendors, improving the company's time-to-market and cost-competitive advantages," said Masaaki Yashiro, COO of SEZ Japan. "These benefits combined with the productivity gains from AeroSonic™ technology offers tremendous added value to our customers, supporting our strategy of becoming a successful one-source supplier."
The design of the new line of dryers can be used in diverse applications including silicon wafers, III-V material wafers, MEMS devices, glass substrates for flat-panel technology and other fragile substrates was developed by the SEZ California Research Center (CRC), formerly L-Tech Corp. It is a simple, motionless drying process producing repeatable results with near particle-neutral performance at 100 nanometers. The technology utilizes isopropyl alcohol (IPA) to draw water away from the surface of the substrate to eliminate water spots even with high aspect ratio structures.
The AeroSonic™ technology uses liquid aerosol IPA at room temperature that differs significantly from the hazardous hot vapor IPA used by older-designed vapor dryers. The potential for fire is eliminated by delivering the liquid aerosol IPA in an oxygen-starved process chamber confirmed by mechanical and software interlocks. Even contacting the aerosol IPA directly with an open flame, will not cause the aerosol IPA to ignite.
By adjusting the amount of aerosol IPA delivered to the surface of the substrate, the AeroSonic™ process can dry half-pitch cassettes and high aspect ratio structures like deep trench wafers. Competitive IPA vapor dryers cannot accomplish this. Using liquid aerosol IPA also provides coverage of the whole wafer surface with IPA during the entire drying cycle for superior performance while actually using less IPA volume per cycle because of more effectively delivering IPA than competitive technologies.
When compared with another competitive technology like spin rinse drying, AeroSonic™ drying has the advantage that its process is motionless. Since wafers are not spun, there is no wafer breakage or wafer damage due to flexing. Spin rinse dryers cannot dry fragile wafers, deep trench wafers or allow for half-pitch spacing. Consequently, AeroSonic™ technology has less downtime since clean-up after wafer breakages is eliminated, making the AeroSonic™ dryer more effective, safer and reliable.
With over 3000 hours mean time between failure (MTBF), excellent particle performance using both full and half pitch cassettes, AeroSonic™ is production ready for today's advanced cleaning requirements and is available in the following configurations:
200mm and smaller wafers for stand-alone operation
300mm wafers for stand-alone operation
200mm and smaller wafers for wet-bench integration
300mm wafers for wet-bench integration
AeroSonic™ FPD is designed for the unique needs of glass substrates used in manufacturing flat panel displays. Process chambers for the AeroSonic™ FPD are sized to match the needs of the particular panel and lot size being processed.
About SEZ
The SEZ Group is a leading supplier of wet wafer surface preparation equipment to the global semiconductor manufacturing industry. The company's proprietary Spin-Processor technology (single wafer technology), as well as its immersion equipment for batch processing forms the basis of a broad equipment solution portfolio for wafer cleaning and decontamination. SEZ maintains development, manufacturing, sales, marketing and service operations in Europe, Japan and Asia-Pacific and North America. Registered in Zurich, Switzerland, SEZ Holding AG is listed on the Swiss Exchange under the symbol SEZN since 1996.
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