Tokyo, January 16, 2012 - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) has developed the world's first fully automated 12-inch (300 millimeters) wafer bonding machine, dubbed the "Bond Meister MWB-12-ST," capable of producing 3-dimensionally integrated LSI (large - scale integration) circuits at room temperature. The company delivered the first unit to the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). Leveraging the new machine's ability to eliminate heat stress and strain in the bonding process and help achieve high productivity, MHI looks to contribute to efforts to further enhance the capacity and performance of LSIs, which currently face limitations in miniaturization.
In lieu of a conventional ion beam gun, the Bond Meister
MWB-12-ST adopts a fast atom beam (FAB) gun to irradiate
atoms for activating a material surface to bond. Whereas an
ion gun radiates an argon ion beam, an FAB gun radiates a
neutral atom beam of argon. The FAB gun, which features
about 20 times greater energy per particle than an ion gun,
is capable of effectively removing oxide film on the
surface of the bonding metal material that normally impedes
bonding. Up to 20-ton weight loading is applicable for
bonding.
The new system is able to undertake continuous bonding of
up to five 12-inch wafers and can perform wafer transfer
and alignment for automatic bonding. The machine is also
capable of preliminarily setting the bonding conditions for
each wafer individually, to accommodate production of
various types in small lots.
AIST is an advanced public research institute involved in
industrial technology fields. It has abundant accumulated
technological knowhow including the area of
room-temperature bonding, a technology that originated in
Japan. Through the adoption and utilization of the
MWB-12-ST at the institute, MHI hopes the new machine and
its technology will contribute significantly to
technological advancement of semiconductor-related
industries.
MHI's room-temperature bonding machine bonds various
materials, such as silicon and metals, at room temperature
by radiating an ion or atom beam on the surface of the
bonding material - a process that has conventionally been
performed by heating. By eliminating the heating process,
room-temperature bonding not only frees devices from heat
stress and strain, thereby enabling rigid and highly
reliable bonding, but also reduces processing time by
eliminating the need for a heating/cooling cycle. These
advantages, coupled with automated wafer alignment, enable
room-temperature bonding to achieve significantly shorter
production time and a higher yield ratio, thus realizing
reductions in device production costs.
Since its launch in 2006, MHI has expanded its
room-temperature bonding machine portfolio steadily,
including an 8-inch (200 millimeters) wafer bonding machine
introduced earlier for 3-D integrated LSI production. At
the same time the company has also established a business
structure to support a variety of needs from MEMS*
manufacturers. With the addition of the latest 12-inch
wafer model, which will enable low-cost volume production
of IC chips, MHI will facilitate the production of memory
chips and microprocessor units (MPU), for which demand is
robust but the market is highly competitive.
Today, ongoing size reduction and further functionality
enhancement of electronic hardware are supported by
large-capacity, high-performance LSIs. As further
enhancement of LSI integration through miniaturization on
two-dimensional (plane) surfaces is reaching a limit, 3-D
integration is seen as a promising breakthrough technology
to solve this matter. With 3-D LSI circuits, the key lies
in achieving technologies for creating electrodes through
multiple layers, in order to send signals between layered
wafers, and for bonding electrodes with high reliability.
MHI's room-temperature bonding technology enables
secure alignment with higher accuracy than heated bonding
and realizes repeated wafer-layer bonding without heat
stress.
Going forward, MHI will further intensify its
proposal-based approach to potential customers to expand
the adoption of room-temperature bonding as a key
technology for 3-D LSI circuit production.
Note: MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) are
micro-size devices, such as sensors and actuators, produced
by microprocessing technology. These devices are used in
automobiles, cellular telephones, digital cameras, ink-jet
printer heads, etc.
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