INDUSTRY NEWS

300-mm Imperative

Axcelis touts 300-mm program

Axcelis Technologies of Beverly, MA, says a recently launched program will speed up installation of its process tools at customer sites. The equipment manufacturer established the program, called 1st Silicon Engineer, in order to increase support for 300-mm fabs. Engineers will be based at clients' sites to oversee installation and start-up of the vendor's ion implant, thermal processing, and related process equipment. The goal of the program is to improve fab productivity by quickly getting tools running and conforming to spec, Axcelis says.

FSI nabs repeat order

An unnamed R&D facility in Europe has made a repeat order for 300-mm surface-conditioning systems from FSI International, the vendor says. The facility already has installed several of the Zeta 300 systems for FEOL and BEOL wafer cleaning. The batch-spray tools clean wafers at the 130-nm node and below using centrifugal spray technology and a nitrogen-purged chamber. Zeta systems accommodate resist strip cleaning, postash cleaning, salicide strip, C4 cleaning, wafer reclaiming, and other processes. The client plans to focus its research on processes at the 90- to 32-nm nodes over the next five years, according to FSI.