11 December 2013

SMART orders EVG automated production system for SOI and direct wafer bonding

EV Group (EVG) of St Florian, Austria, a supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment for MEMS (microelectromechanical systems), nanotechnology and semiconductor applications, says that the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research Technology (SMART) has ordered an EVG850LT fully automated production bonding system designed for silicon-on-insulator (SOI) and direct wafer bonding using low-temperature plasma activation processing.

SMART, which is a research center established by the USA’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in partnership with the National Research Foundation of Singapore, will use the system to support its advanced substrate development efforts.

The MIT research center is located outside the USA in Singapore and has five different research groups, including the Low Energy Electronic Systems (LEES) Research Group, which focuses on integrating silicon CMOS and compound semiconductor materials to enable new integrated circuits for wireless devices, power electronics, LEDs, displays and other applications. The LEES Research Group has a fabrication facility where the EVG850LT has already been installed and is in use.

According to professor Eugene Fitzgerald of MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, SMART chose the EVG850LT for the center’s R&D efforts due to the system’s high process flexibility and performance, EVG’s experience in low-temperature bonding, and expertise and support in process development. “The charter of our LEES Research Group is to identify new IC technologies that enable devices that consume less power, enable higher performance and open up new applications for information systems,” he adds. “EV Group’s technology and expertise will play an important role in supporting this effort.”

The EVG850 platform, upon which the EVG850LT system is built, is the only SOI and direct wafer bonding platform designed to operate in high-throughput, high-yield environments — establishing it as the industry standard in the SOI wafer bonding market, it is claimed. The EVG850LT combines all essential steps for wafer bonding — from cleaning and alignment to pre-bonding and IR inspection — in a single platform, ensuring an ultra-clean production process throughout all stages to enable high-yield, void-free wafers (as opposed to stand-alone processing units that require the wafers to be manually transported in a regular cleanroom environment). The EVG850 supports a variety of advanced substrates, including SOI and silicon on lattice engineered substrate (SOLES) technology, up to 300mm in diameter.

EVG has worked closely with leading research institutes and inventors of SOI technology for more than 20 years, says Frank Huysmans, regional sales director, Asia/Pacific. “SOI wafer producers and researchers rely on EVG’s equipment to advance the production and technological capabilities of SOI wafers,” he adds.

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