A clean routine
Equipment and Supplies | Material Transfer | Seals | Hi-tech Manufacturing |
Abstract
Manufacture of semiconductor chips requires outstanding precision. Among the components used in lens assemblies are shock absorbers and membranes. Trelleborg Sealing Solutions makes these and packs them in cleanroom conditions at its factory in Tewkesbury in the UK to minimise the risk of contamination.
Shock absorbers and membranes are made in cleanroom conditions at the Trelleborg factory in Tewkesbury
In the semiconductor industry where the standard measurement is the nanometre, almost any particle is the enemy.
The world of semiconductor chips is moving in two directions at the same time. While chips become more powerful and include more features, those features are becoming ever smaller. And that miniaturisation requires outstanding precision in the manufacturing process.
Carl Zeiss SMT (Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology) supplies the optical systems used by Netherlands-based ASML, the world’s leading supplier of lithograph machines for silicon wafer production. But the relationship is much more that of partners than of supplier and customer.
The ASML machines, called “wafer steppers”, with the Zeiss optics at their heart, transfer the structures of the chips’ components onto the silicon by photolithography. Intense light is directed through a pattern of transparent and opaque surfaces on a mask onto a coated silicon wafer.
In its factory in Oberkochen in Germany, Zeiss makes the optics that generate the light and concentrate it, reducing the size of the image on the mask to the required area on the wafer. Because of the fine detail that has to be achieved, the glass has to be of the highest purity, otherwise the series of lenses would distort the image.
The light, too, has to be a precisely defined laser. One of the limits to the size of features on a chip is the wavelength of the light; Zeiss’s current optics work at wavelengths as short as 193 nanometres.
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