The SMC cleanrooms are home to a wide range of equipment, dedicated to the fabrication of electronic, MEMS and other related devices. Most of the equipment is capable of processing small samples through to 200mm silicon wafers.
Dry Etching
- Aluminium and polysilicon RIE etcher using SiCl4, and Cl2 chemistry.
- Dilectric RIE using CF4, CHF3, Ar and O2.
- Deep silicon etching using one of our two DRIE systems.
Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) and Back Side Grinding
- Polishing of oxide, nitride, metals and polymers using our Presi CMP tool.
- Grinding of Sicon to thin wafes using a Disco back grinder
Wet Etching
- Fume extracted class 10 laminar flow chemical stations for
- mineral acid cleaning and etching treatments.
- solvent stripping and cleaning
Diffusion
- Dry and wet thermal oxidation
- Annealing of thin films
- Carbonisation of polymer films
- Phosphorous and boron solid source diffusion
- LPCVD amorphous and polysilicon
- LPCVD of stoichiometric and low-stress silicon nitride
Thin Film Deposition
- Physical vapour depsoition (PVD) using magnetron sputtering for materials including AL, Al/1%Si, Al/1%Si/4%Cu, Cr, Cu, ITO, Ni, Ta, TaN, Ti, TiN and W.
- Thermal evaporation of materials including Ag, Al, Bi, Ni, Pt, Ti and Zn.
- Plasma enhanced depositon (PECVD) of silicon dioxide and nitride.
Photolithography
- Standard spin resist coating using standard positive and negative working resists along with materials such as polyimide, SU8 and PDMS is achieved using a number of different systems.
- Spray coating with positive and negative working resists which gives us the capability to spray coat different materials from standard resists through to novel polymer materials such as Nafion
- Mask aligning and exposure using our Karl Suss MA8/B8, double-sided mask aligner contact system.
- Maskless lithography with front and back side alignment using the DMO ML3 maskless lithography system.
