MICRO: Products

The Pro family of plasma etch and deposition tools is compatible with advanced silicon etch technology, which achieves the anisotropic deep-etched structures in silicon needed to make MEMS devices such as accelerometers; gyroscopes; precision spectrophotometer slits; and microactuator, micromotor, and microturbine components. The family consists of the Multiplex single-wafer or batch plasma etch or deposition system for R&D applications, which has a vacuum loadlock and one etch or deposition source; the MACS for pilot production, a cassette-to-cassette upgrade to the Mulitplex for loadlocked systems; and the ASPECT for fully automated volume manufacturing, a dedicated, cassette-to-cassette cluster platform. The systems have deep silicon etch rates of up to 20 µm/min, uniformities of ±3%, and deposition rates of boro phosphosilicate cladding layers for planar optical waveguides increased by 3.5X to 0.8 µm/min. The Stretch-To-Length gas-line heater system allows engineers to customize the thermal profile for any gas-line application. Superior to heat tape, the system reduces the potential for hot and cold spots on gas lines. With its preformed construction, it can be wrapped around the delivery line with consistent heater/gas-line contact, for improved temperature uniformity. Because it is flexible, it can compensate for components of varying sizes. The easy-to-install, two-part system fits on most gas-line configurations. It includes a 2-W/sq in. heater and silicone rubber foam insulation. With a maximum operating temperature of 200°C, the heater system can be used for gas lines that deliver boron trichloride, chlorine trifluoride, dichlorosilane, tetraethylortho-silicate, and tungsten hexafluoride. It can also be used for process-gas-line qualification. The DFP 200 dense-fluid processor is a fully integrated, 200-mm single-wafer chamber that enables the development and evaluation of technologies for deposition, cleaning, conditioning, and lithography applications using supercritical CO . The vacuum-compatible system can be integrated with vacuum-based processes on a single cluster tool. Supercritical CO processing offers an enabling