News Article
SPTS wins China over with its PVD technology
The UK-based firm has received an order for a physical vapour deposition which will be used for compound semiconductor growth. These will include gallium arsenide and aluminium nitride RF devices
SPTS Technologies has announced that its Sigma fxP PVD system had been selected by a Chinese foundry dedicated to producing RF devices on GaAs substrates.
The system will be used to deposit front and backside metal layers including integrated passives for producing monolithic microwave integrated circuits.
China is one of the world’s fastest growing markets for mobile phones, and increasing counts of GaAs-based switches and power amplifiers appear in every handset.
SPTS says its production platform, the Sigma fxP system, provides many capabilities for GaAs based RFIC fabrication.
“SPTS is proud to be part of China’s developing compound semiconductor device manufacturing industry,” says Kevin T. Crofton, executive vice president and chief operating officer at SPTS. “We look forward to contributing to our customer’s success in their production ramp.”
This is SPTS’ second new Chinese customer announcement in recent weeks, following a previous announcement from the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology selection of a SPTS’ Primaxx Monarch 3 dry release system for MEMS.
Chinese domestic production of such components will grow to serve the China market, the world’s largest consumer of handsets.
The Sigma fxP is a single-wafer cluster tool designed for high-volume PVD processing. The flexible system supports various process chamber configurations and combinations to address a large variety of specific applications.
SPTS Sigma fXP Reactor
Deposition process modules are based on a standard design that enables simple technology upgrades. Key applications for the Sigma fxP include thick aluminium alloys for power device and next generation CMOS bondpad and metal seeds for advanced packaging applications. These include applications such as 3D-IC TSV & UBM/RDL, highly uniform AlN for RF-MEMS devices and processes for the compound semiconductor industry.
