Designing and manufacturing devices to meet the challenges of the 21st Century from the next generation of communications to power the Internet of Things, electric vehicles, information processing and data storage drives the trend towards smaller, faster, greener.
Whether you need to manufacture and characterize devices with atomic precision, identify and understand failure modes, or monitor advanced manufacturing processes, our solutions enable you to achieve your goals.
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Lasers are being used in many different applications. From LIDAR to faster communications lasers are vital for enabling many advances in technology. Oxford Instruments has long experience of plasma processing the III-V materials such as InP and GaAs / AlGaAs that are used to manufacture solid-state laser diodes.
Our Plasma Technologies enable you to produce reliable InP lasers and VCSELs, reducing optical losses and achieving the highest yield and throughput.
InP enables the manufacture of components that can operate at high frequencies allowing higher volumes of data. When design and fabrication is optimized InP lasers provide high spectral purity and optical power, over a wide temperature range. The achievable wavelength range of 1100 – 2000 nm is optimal for fiber optic communications.
Plasma etching and deposition solutions are offered to get the maximum light output with the highest yield and throughput.
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VCSELs (Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers) are currently going through a wave of success with 3D sensing applications. Our VCSEL device manufacturing solutions support excellent electro-optical performance at maximum yield.
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MicroLEDs are an emerging display technology with distinct technical advantages. They offer high brightness, contrast, and dynamic range while maintaining low power consumption, making them ideal for applications like Augmented Reality and smartwatches. To meet the high-volume demands of the consumer market, the microLED manufacturing process must be optimized for yield and efficiency.
Augmented Reality, or AR, is a technology that allows users to visualize and interact with computer-generated objects layered on top of real-world environments.
Our advanced plasma processing solutions – achieved with ICP Etching, RIE and Ion Beam Etching – can handle wafers up to 200mm in size for high-volume production of AR devices.
Cluster configuration options are available, using a field-proven, highly-reliable vacuum transfer robot for mask etching and AR coating modules.
The PlasmaPro 100 process modules offer a 200mm platform with single wafer and multi-wafer batch capability. The process modules offer high throughput, high precision and excellent uniformity with clean smooth vertical profiles and etch surfaces. Our systems have a wide install base within high volume manufacturing (HVM), with well-developed process solutions.
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Our Ionfab system for IBE has been configured for optimum uniformity on 200mm wafer size. Our proprietary ion beam technology and patent filed grid design allow us to produce standard 45° gratings with excellent precision. Our processing capability covers various materials such as Si and SiO2.
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Wide Bandgap (WBG) materials, such as Silicon Carbide (SiC) and Gallium Nitride (GaN), are revolutionizing the electronics landscape by providing enhanced performance in high-power and high-frequency applications.
Oxford Instruments, a leader in materials characterization and advanced manufacturing solutions, is at the forefront of advancing WBG technology, leveraging its expertise to drive innovation in this dynamic field.
Fabrication Process for SiC and GaN Power Devices
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Wide Band Gap (WBG) devices are uniquely capable of delivering the RF performance for many modern device technologies. Base stations demand fast switching devices operating at high powers to deliver the volume of data transmission demanded by consumers.
New ways of energy creation, dispersion and harvesting is essential for the growing demands of an increasing population. Semiconductor technology such as GaN HEMTs are being used to improve energy usage in green technology such as electric cars and for communications applications such as base station transmission.
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2D materials such as graphene, MoS2 or hBN can be used to enhance current devices and build new device architectures. FETs, batteries and filters with unique properties can now be realized.
Highlights
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Highlights
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Nanoscale electrical characterization is key to understand the performance of semiconductor devices as well as potential failure modes. One widely used technique for this is Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM).
Using a large number of complementary AFM techniques such as scanning microwave impedance microscopy (sMIM) Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) and conductive AFM it is possible to characterize the majority of material properties in your semiconductor device system, from simple I-V curves to dopant concentrations maps (down to 1014 atoms/cm3).
The ability of our Cypher and MFP-3D AFMs to combine a number of these techniques allows you to fully understand and optimise your device performance.
Once a failure is identified and located in a device it is usually necessary to remove that structure for further analysis either in a different instrument (e.g. transmission electron microscope) or to achieve a more favourable set of conditions in the same instrument (e.g. Focused ion beam).
The demands of the semiconductor industry require a repeatable process with a typical time of less than 30 minutes per sample. The difficulty of this task is further increased as devices head towards the 3 or 5 nm node as this requires specimen thicknesses to be less than 20 nm.
OmniProbe 400 is the perfect tool to achieve all of this the piezo-driven motion allows repeatable positioning at the 10nm scale whilst the concentric rotation allows advanced preparation geometries to be achieved with ease, this leads to the highest possible quality specimens.
For failure analysis in semiconductor devices metallised layers must be exposed. This becomes ever more challenging as node sizes in devices become smaller and architectures become ever more 3 dimensional.
Our Plasma assisted etch tools ensure that multiple semiconductor compounds whether it be oxides, nitrides or polymides are removed accurately without lifting or damaging the metallisation.
Our flexible FA tool allows die deprocessing up to 10x faster than the previous process to ensure maximum throughput and productivity.
Once a failed device has been found and isolated from the rest of the die, the true detective work begins to identify the root cause of that failure. The cause of that failure could be due to inconsistency in the chemistry of the process, foreign contaminant particles or variation in crystalline structure of deposited material amongst many other possibilities.
Many of these potential fault causes are extremely small, typically on the order of a few nanometres. Our latest generation Ultim Extreme energy dispersive x-ray spectrometer (EDS) allows you to work at the same conditions that you would image in the SEM to get elemental information at 10 nm resolution on bulk devices.
In the TEM our Ultim Max TEM detectors are powered by AZtecTEM to ensure the higher possible accuracy quantitative analysis at the highest possible resolution.
For the data storage industry, understanding the nanometre scale magnetic behaviour of magnetic disk media is crucial to understanding its performance in the final device. Magnetic force microscopy (MFM) allows the direct imaging of magnetic domain structure of disk media and other magnetic devices.
Whether in the analysis of magnetically recorded bits or in the performance of transducers that read/write them, our MFP-3D Infinity AFM with variable field module (VFM) allows accurate analysis of the most challenging specimens.
The inherent spatial resolution and direct probing capability of atomic force microscopy make it a powerful tool for nanoscale electrical characterization. Asylum Research offers a full suite of tools for characterizing electrical properties at the nanoscale on the MFP-3D™ and Cypher™ families of atomic force microscopes.
While quantitative electrical measurement in itself is the goal, electrical modes are also often used to quickly detect, distinguish, and identify components based on qualitative differences in electric properties relative to other materials in the sample.
Process variation, contamination or the presence of hard particles can cause significant issues when a device moves from development to volume manufacture. For example. the presence of even nanometer size particles in a hard disk drive can result in disk failure or a head crash.
To ensure quality and it is critical to quickly and accurately identify, analyze and classify those contaminants or particles. Accurate classification of foreign material allows the root cause of a failure or process variation to be determined quickly to minimize downtime, maximize productivity and ensure quality through your supply chain.
AZtecFeature uses guided workflows and intelligent algorithms to easily detect and characterize thousands of particles that may be present over large sample areas.
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