IPG steps up laser capacity with Veeco kit
Veeco Instruments has sold a cluster MBE tool to fiber laser specialist IPG Photonics.
IPG, which owns a semiconductor fab in Oxford, MA, has become one of the world's leading manufacturers of laser diodes in the past couple of years thanks to booming sales of high-power fiber laser systems for applications in industrial machining.
The Gen200 MBE tool that it has ordered from Veeco enables 4 x 4-inch epiwafer production and will help IPG in its bid to increase its diode manufacturing volumes in the future.
IPG is in the process of constructing additional fab cleanroom capacity at its headquarters and indicated to compoundsemiconductor.net that it plans to significantly increase its output of GaAs-based lasers, which emit at 980 nm.
Having manufactured an estimated aggregate of 1 MW in total laser chip output power in 2005, the company is hoping to double that figure this year and hit 6 MW in 2008. Each IPG chip typically emits 8 W, although the company is also working on increasing that figure.
Veeco has also sold a similar cluster machine to an unspecified electronics company working on the development of a new oxide-on-silicon technology.
The un-named company will collaborate with Veeco on process development at the equipment vendor's process integration center (PIC) in St Paul. This will continue in parallel with the implementation of an identical system to be delivered once the process development is complete.
