SCREEN-HOLDINGS

SCREEN Semiconductor Solutions Co., Ltd. (SCREEN SPE, president: Masato Goto), a SCREEN Holdings Group (TOKYO:7735) company, has finalized development of its new industry-first¹ SB-3300 wafer back-side cleaning system. The SB-3300 is equipped with a chemical etching/cleaning function as well as a physical cleaning function that uses brushes. Sales of the system will begin in December.

The data center market has expanded significantly in recent years, driven by the continuing rise in data traffic required for activities such as remote working, e-learning and video streaming. At the same time, rapid adoption of 5G-compatible smartphones and IoT infrastructure mainly for in-vehicle and industrial applications has created growing demand for the sophisticated semiconductors needed by these and other cutting-edge markets.

However, as miniaturization and integration of the circuits for advanced logic and memory ICs has improved, there has been an associated decline in yield rates caused by back-side particle adhesion and warping of wafers during their manufacturing processes. This issue has made cleaning of the back side more important than ever before and led to growing calls for improvements in productivity.

In response to these trends, SCREEN SPE has developed its industry-first SB-3300 single wafer cleaning system. The SB-3300 is specially designed for back-side cleaning of wafers and features both a chemical cleaning function and brush cleaning function that uses a scrubber technique.² The system performs chemical and brush cleaning processes simultaneously to ensure highly effective removal of particles on the back side of wafers. These particles are a significant cause of defocusing during the photolithographic process of cutting-edge semiconductor devices.

The SB-3300 is equipped with SCREEN SPE’s proprietary chuck system, which securely protects the device surface of wafers, preventing both etching residue along the wafer edge and chemical wraparound onto the device surface. It also provides highly controlled etching using densification processing of the nozzle sequence and a chemical dispense control function. This produces outstanding precision and uniformity across the whole wafer surface that helps to suppress warping.

In addition, the SB-3300 utilizes a platform that inherits the same highly space saving design made possible by the four level, stacked towers of the SU-3300 , SCREEN SPE’s flagship single wafer cleaning model. This platform is equipped with 16 chambers, enabling the SB-3300 to achieve the industry’s highest level of practical processing capacity for back-side cleaning at up to 700 wafers per hour, including the reversing of wafers. Thanks to its wealth of features, the system resolves a range of issues related to wafer back-side cleaning processes for advanced semiconductor devices while also making a major contribution to the improvement of productivity.

1. Based on SCREEN in-house research.
2. Method in which wafers are physically cleaned using soft brushes and pure water.

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