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Plasma etch and deposition system maker Tegal Corp of Petaluma, CA, USA has signed a beta-site agreement to ship a Compact 360 NLD system this summer to the central process development laboratory of ‘one of the world’s foremost LED makers’. The tool will be used for developing and qualifying conformal nano-layer deposition (NLD) passivation processes for high-brightness LED (HB-LED) manufacturing.

The beta-site agreement enables Tegal to continue cooperating with the customer in developing and refining deposition processes for NLD thin films, further optimizing the electrical and physical properties of NLD thin films, and confirming the applicability of NLD thin-film deposition to HB-LED manufacturing. The firms will also collect tool performance and reliability data from the system as it is exercised in production mode by the customer.

“We are proud to have been selected for this important development effort with the leading company in HB-LEDs,” says Tegal’s president and CEO Thomas Mika. “We believe that our NLD technology has wide application in the fast-growing area of HB-LED manufacturing and are pleased to have this opportunity to demonstrate our capabilities in our first beta site for both NLD and the new Compact platform.”

The Compact 360 NLD cluster tool is a 200mm/300mm-capable bridge tool supporting Tegal’s patented nano-layer deposition processes. NLD is a unique, cyclic MOCVD process for highly conformal coatings that incorporates plasma film treatment with each deposition cycle, says the firm. It offers the benefits of atomic layer deposition (ALD) with the potential for a much higher deposition rate, and system throughput, than ALD. NLD also offers the benefit of using common MOCVD precursor materials that are readily available for a wide variety of metal, metal oxide and metal nitride films.

Also, Tegal’s Compact platform can accommodate all wafer sizes from 100 to 300mm in one, two or three process module configurations, with a variety of front-end\ loadlock options including FOUP (front-opening unified pod) and EFEM (equipment front-end module).

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