Media Coverage

In 2015, the Welsh Government provided the investment to develop the cluster and was the catalyst for Wales to become the leading centre for compound semiconductor expertise in the world. SPTS Technologies won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation 2020 and currently employs 447 people at its Wales HQ. It also has significant expansion plans for the Welsh operation.

In the last few years, Ann Jourdain of IMEC and co-workers have described silicon device stacking through extreme silicon thinning technology. Recently Jourdan and Dave Thomas of SPTS reviewed this technology for the Jan/Feb issue of Chip Scale Review. The technology is interesting enough that IFTLE will take a closer look at it.

We expect 2021 to be a growth year, with contributions from all our main markets. The automotive industry has recovered very quickly with only a modest amount of inventory in the channels. Interestingly, since COVID, people would rather own a car than travel on public transport. A vibrant automotive market supports many parts of the semiconductor industry; power management, connectivity, image sensors, LEDs.

The outlook for SPTS’ 200mm wafer processing equipment is very strong, as it has been for the past 5 years or so,” said David Butler, executive vice president and general manager for SPTS Technologies, a KLA Company. “The buoyancy of the smaller wafer market is very visible in our own stats. As a percentage of our total business, sales for 200mm or smaller declined from 2010 to 2015 when it approached an approximate 50/50 split with 300mm. Then the trend reversed, and the 200mm or smaller percentage is back to 2010 levels.

IMEC worked with SPTS to develop scallop-less nano-TSVs. Functional electrical structures were measured and characterized, showing up to 99% electrical yielding connections between the front side and backside of the device wafers, and confirming a final backside-to-frontside overlay below 15nm.  

KLA’s Oreste Donzella gives Francoise Von Trapp of 3DInCites an update on the recent formation of the company’s Electronics, Packaging and Components (EPC) Group. Read what Oreste had to say about the EPC Group, SPTS Technologies and growth opportunities.

Mark Christoffersen, Director of Manufacturing & Facilities, believes tests might give the business more confidence and bring more people back into work. "From a confidence point of view it would be really beneficial. Obviously the science has to support that, it has to be accurate. For us as a business that would be really important."  

In an interview with Gerry Kelly of SPTS Technologies,  he said that installations had gone according to plan during the first quarter in the Asia Pacific region due to training and experience of the SPTS in-country service teams. Kelly added that similarly for KLA, SPTS’s parent company, the services business remained robust with installations carried out as planned, albeit with careful scheduling to account for varying travel restrictions and quarantine requirements.

“Turning to wafer processing and plasma etch, there are two choices in trench profile when it comes to non-planar SiC devices. Users ask for trenches with no micro-trenching (flat base) or bottom rounding (test tube shape). Whichever profile is used, end-pointing is desirable to stop the etch front at the right depth,” said Kevin Crofton, president of SPTS and senior vice president at KLA.  

While Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) have been used in data communications for over 20 years, there are a host of emerging applications that are boosting demand for VCSEL production and performance. These include less well-known applications such as infrared illumination/heating and atomic clocks, to better-known proximity sensing for automotive safety, high-resolution video display, and gesture/facial recognition. This article gives a broad overview of some of these applications driving demand for etch and deposition technologies used in the manufacturing of VCSEL structures on compound semiconductor wafers.

The Welsh Government has announced a new £1.3 million project to develop world-leading process technologies for a range of applications, including autonomous vehicles, novel devices for clean energy, future mobility, artificial intelligence, advanced packaging, and biosensors and wearable sensors. Part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the ASSET project (Application Specific Semiconductor Etching Technology) is funded under the Welsh Government's SMARTExpertise programme and is an industrially driven, collaborative project with partners across south Wales, including: SPTS Technologies, IQE, the Compound Semiconductor Centre (CSC), Biovici, BioMEMS, Swansea and Cardiff Universities, and Integrated Compound Semiconductors Ltd (Manchester).

Others see demand for different applications. “Our first-half demand was good for 200mm and smaller wafer sizes, notably on wide bandgap semiconductors for high-performance power devices,” said Kevin Crofton, president of SPTS Technologies and executive vice president at Orbotech. “For the second half, we are seeing a pick-up in all sectors, in particular, RF power amplifiers and filtering for 5G infrastructure, which are 200mm and 150mm wafer activities.” Recently, KLA completed its previously announced acquisition of SPTS/Orbotech. SPTS offers 200mm deposition and etch tools. “We never stopped building new process equipment for 200mm and smaller wafer sizes,” Crofton said. “MEMS, RF, photonics and power semis are made on silicon and other substrates based on 200mm, 150mm and 100mm.”