Mar 17 2008
After years of success with their first generation Enhanced Spin Etcher (ESE™), InnoMax, a leading Korean single-wafer spin etch systems, recently launched their next generation product, ESE™-Thin, to meet the emerging thin wafer processing market. Innomax has filled their first order at one of the major semiconductor manufacturers in Korea.
“The ESE™ family provides 1-4 chambers of non-contact process chucks for front- and back-side processing, such as stress relief, polymer removal, oxide/recess etching and solder/gold bump. To stay competitive, we constantly strive for price/performance improvement,” said J.S. Kwon, Director, Global Sales Division at InnoMax. “We chose to collaborate with Innovative Robotics to break through the thin wafer handling barriers that our previous partner couldn’t. Innovative Robotics proved to us that they are a unique, agile solution provider who can respond quickly to time-constrained projects like this. They took less than three months to develop an integrated Bernoulli/electrical edge grip solution which they combined with their flipping capability to handle sub-100 micron thin wafers.”
Walter Henry, President of Innovative Robotics, emphasizes this solution’s strengths: “We understand the difficulties of dealing with thin wafers, especially when a flipping motion is required. Thanks to our modular system architecture, we could quickly offer a fully integrated flipping 5th-axis with a Bernoulli handler that would meet our customer’s requirements. The intelligent sensor-guided electrical edge gripping mechanism offers contactless wafer handling that prevents wafer breakage and chipping often caused by pneumatic edge grippers. Furthermore, the modularity of the handler design makes it readily adaptable to other substrate shapes, sizes, and process such as PV cell production.