Laboratory, optical and precision equipments (excl. glasses)

Description

DTU Danchip is buying a Maskless Aligner, MLA 150 similar to the one bought in 2017. In 2017 DTU Danchip acquired a MLA 100 maskless aligner from Heidelberg Instruments Mikro-technik GmbH, which is being used for photolithography. Traditionally, a pattern in micro and nanofabrication, has been produced by shining UV light through a chromium mask with a chromium pattern, thereby creating a “shado image” on a silicon wafer with a thin photosensitive film (photo-resist). Contrary to this method, maskless aligners are writing the pattern directly on the wafer by means of a guided laser beam, thus eliminating the need for a shadow mask. This technique is especially advantageous in research and development projects, where frequent design changes often necessitate many new masks. A significant cost saving is thereby achieved, since a single mask easily can cost 350 EUR. Time is also saved, since it typically takes a week to receive a new mask. In 2017 DTU Danchip acquired a MLA 100 maskless aligner from Heidelberg Instruments Mikro-technik GmbH, which is being used for photolithography. Traditionally, a pattern in micro and nanofabrication, has been produced by shining UV light through a chromium mask with a chromium pattern, thereby creating a “shado image” on a silicon wafer with a thin photosensitive film (photo-resist). Contrary to this method, maskless aligners are writing the pattern directly on the wafer by means of a guided laser beam, thus eliminating the need for a shadow mask. This technique is especially advantageous in research and development projects, where frequent design changes often necessitate many new masks. A significant cost saving is thereby achieved, since a single mask easily can cost 350 EUR. Time is also saved, since it typically takes a week to receive a new mask. For the reasons mentioned above, DTU Danchip’s maskless aligner has become so popular in less than 2 years that it has become an important development tool for many researchers, students and start-up companies. Therefore, DTU wishes to purchase a second machine to supplement the first one – however, in a slightly larger version that can handle up to 200 mm substrates and write slightly faster. There are big cost savings in purchasing a second machine of the same brand: — Savings in training: Each year DTU Danchip’s cleanroom receives approximately 150 new users. Most of these need training in photolithography. Heidelberg Instruments have promised in their offer that an absolutely identical user interface will be developed for the 2 tools, so that one can operate both tools after just one training. If 2 vastly different ma-chines were installed, the already large time used on training would be doubled. — Savings in process development: Process recipes can be directly transferred between the 2 machines. This saves many valuable engineer hours that would be used to develop the same processes on a different type of machine. — Mutual backup: As previously mentioned, the maskless aligner has in very short time be-come central for many research and product development projects. 2 machines with the same processes will act as each other’s mutual backup. If one machine doesn’t work, the other can be used, so delays in important publications or the introduction of new products to the market can be avoided. Many start-up companies’ survival often depend on that their products are not delayed. 2 different machines would not guarantee this to nearly the same extent. — Simplified quality control (QC): DTU Danchip is ISO 9001:2008 certified and performs regular quality control (QC) on the most used processes, where it is controlled that the pro-cesses lives up to some basic requirements for the performance. If a similar machine is purchased, a uniform quality can be achieved with much fewer resources, since the pro-cesses will be able to run completely in parallel on the 2 machines. It would imply far bigger costs to develop and maintain 2 different QC processes on 2 different ma-chines.