21 February 2017

Noel expands facility and adds new wafer-processing capabilities

Noel Technologies Inc of Campbell, CA, USA, a specialty foundry focused on process development and fabrication services, has expanded its wafer-fabrication facility in Silicon Valley by adding square footage and installing additional equipment that boost its production capacity by 25%. With additions including an i-line lithography system with 0.35μm resolution, a top-down critical dimension (CD) scanning electron microscope (SEM) and more plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) tools, the 20-year-old firm has increased its range of foundry services for customers in the semiconductor, MEMS, bio-medical device, sensor and LED markets.

"We perform many wafer-fabrication services integral to the development of the newest micro- and nanoelectronic products," says founder & chief technical officer Leon Pearce. "As a manufacturing partner located right in Silicon Valley, we offer chip designers a local foundry solution to shorten their R&D cycles and reduce their time to production," he adds.

While large foundries provide fabrication services using standard CMOS processes, Noel specializes in helping chip designers that work with non-CMOS materials and non-standard process flows. Specifically, the firm has decades of experience and capabilities in developing novel process flows involving III-V compound materials, gold, silver, transparent conductive oxides (TCOs) and emerging materials. In addition, all front-end wafer processing is performed in-house under the supervision of Noel's process engineering team, eliminating the need for customers to coordinate work flows among multiple suppliers.

Tags: GaAs foundry

Visit: www.noeltech.com/Process-Capabilities