Deposition equipment maker Aixtron SE of Herzogenrath, near Aachen, Germany received the CS High-Volume Manufacturing Award 2016 for its new fully automated AIX G5+ C metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) system at this year's CS Industry Awards at the CS International conference in Brussels, Belgium (1-2 March). The peer-decided prize for the international compound semiconductor industry recognizes key areas of innovation surrounding the chip manufacturing process from research to completed device, focusing on the people, processes and products that drive the industry forward.
"Two great opportunities to slash manufacturing costs are to scale to larger wafers and switch growth to silicon substrates. With Aixton's latest tool, both options are readily available," the judges commented.
"The AIX G5+ C is the first complete MOCVD system solution addressing the epitaxy production needs of the GaN-on-Si [gallium nitride on silicon] LED and power device industry," said Dr Frank Wischmeyer, VP of marketing & business development Power Electronics at Aixtron, on accepting the award. "By combining two key innovations into one new product, Aixtron is enabling a continuous LED [light-emitting diode] or HEMT [high-electron-mobility transistor] MOCVD process flow without operator interaction with the high-capacity 150mm and 200mm batch system architecture," he adds. "It is the first time that an industry-standard solution of operation of MOCVD tools in silicon CMOS lines is created by adding wafer-level automation with a wafer-cassette-to-cassette handler to the MOCVD batch technology."
The AIX G5+ C simplifies the handling of silicon wafers and processing in a fab environment and enables production at the highest yields, says Aixtron. The firm's proprietary in-situ chamber cleaning process enables full control of the chamber conditions without the need for external parts cleaning and without the need for reconditioning these parts in the MOCVD reactor after cleaning. This cleaning process runs fully automatically and eliminates any manual or automated removal of hardware components from the chamber for ex-situ clean or conditioning.
The AIX G5+ C system has been qualified for high-volume manufacturing by the GaN LED and power HEMT industry, demonstrating significant gain in wafer throughput and product yield, says Aixtron.
