When it comes to being fast in the silicon wafer marketplace, clean means everything. This clean, however, has got to be cleaner then Grandma clean. It has got to be clean down to the molecule clean. In the race for the fastest and best wafers, any improvement can mean billions to the company that gets there first.
Legacy Systems Incorporated, a provider of semiconductor wafer cleaning equipment components to semiconductor wafer equipment manufacturers, offers a range of equipment to increase efficiencies involved with semiconductor silicon wafers. The company offers a range of products from ozone to gas generator products but is currently involved in the photo resist removal process on silicon wafers. The company’s cleaning process is currently viewed as a leading manufacturing issue solution in backend processes. It is also hoped that it will ultimately be integrated as a tier one standard within the industry.
So sure that the process will be considered a standard within the industry, the company is currently filing patent protection papers in the Peoples Republic of China. In-of-itself this may appear to be a common sense undertaking, but when China’s 10th five year plan announces an increase in silicon chip manufacturing capacity from $2 billion to $25 billion and Intel builds its first ($2.5 billion) chip manufacturing plant in Asia, the urgency and acceptance of patent protection becomes clear.
The company currently works with one of the world’s largest semiconductor equipment manufacturers and is finding acceptance of its new technology. As chips continue to improve in efficiency and capacity, the photo resist issues also increase when considering possible damage to components such as copper interconnects. In the company’s hopes for this particular process to be fully accepted, it is also looking for the introduction of further proprietary equipment and processes to supplement its further growth. Generally, in the wafer equipment industry, cleaner is faster and faster is the name of the game. In these respects, the company appears to be well positioned in the race to help the fastest wafer designs get faster.
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