17 May 2018

Finland’s VTT orders latest-generation EVG120 automated resist processing system for ‘More than Moore’ applications

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EV Group of St Florian, Austria – a supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment for semiconductor, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and nanotechnology applications – has received an order for its EVG120 automated resist processing system from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd.

An existing customer of EVG’s wafer bonding and alignment systems, VTT is among the first to place an order for the newest version of the EVG120 system, which has been enhanced to provide greater reliability, throughput and process performance compared with the previous-generation platform. VTT will use the new system to increase capacity for supporting parallel R&D projects involving new and different coating materials, as well as to enable new research applications in ‘More than Moore’ technology areas such as MEMS, optoelectronics, photonics and compound semiconductors.

“After a thorough product evaluation of lithography coating systems, VTT selected the EVG120 in a competitive tender, with coating uniformity and repeatability of coating thickness among the key evaluation criteria,” says Heini Saloniemi, manager, process engineering, at VTT. The new EVG120 system “will enhance our lithography process capabilities and allow us to explore new avenues of research,” she adds.

EVG says that the EVG120 system provides reliable and high-quality coating and developing processes in a universal platform. Its versatility and flexibility, as well as its low cost of ownership, makes it a suitable system for research environments where many development projects may be running in parallel, while its high throughput enables its use in volume production.

The updated EVG120 platform maintains all capabilities of the previous-generation platform, including: compact design for minimal footprint; customizable module configurations for spin and spray coating, developing, bake and chill; EVG’s CoverSpin technology, which provides optimized coating uniformity of odd-shaped and square substrates; proprietary OmniSpray technology for conformal coating of extreme topographies; and wafer-edge handling.

In addition, new features on the updated platform include:

• separation of wet processing modules to enable constant conditions chamber to chamber;
• an integrated chemistry cabinet for resist pumps and bottles (including support for high-viscosity resists) for improved process control and short dispense cycles;
• a new robot handling system that provides the highest reliability and increased throughput; and
• optional humidity and temperature control for constant environmental conditions.

“As the leading research institute in Finland, VTT has a strong global network of industry partners throughout the world to transform breakthrough research into new products and services in renewable energy, health care, smart industry and smart city, as well as beyond,” comments product management director Thomas Wagenleitner. “EVG is working tirelessly to support our key customers such as VTT in these endeavors,” he adds. “As part of that effort, we have leveraged more than 20 years of experience in resist processing to drive continuous improvements to our industry-benchmark EVG120 platform. This allows us to enable even greater levels of coating performance for our customers at a lower cost of ownership, which is critical for both production fabs and research labs at the cutting edge of technology like VTT.”

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EV Group introduces next-gen EVG120 automated resist processing system

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