Smoltek Semi has suc­cess­ful­ly man­u­fac­tured capac­i­tor pro­to­types (with­out car­bon nanofibers) on 8‑inch wafer for­mat. The pro­cess­ing has been car­ried out in col­lab­o­ra­tion with sev­er­al man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ners, includ­ing research insti­tutes, tool ven­dors as well as high-vol­ume foundries. Most of the pro­cess­ing has been made on stan­dard high-vol­ume pro­duc­tion tools used for com­po­nent pro­duc­tion in the semi­con­duc­tor industry.

The capac­i­tor pro­to­types have the pur­pose of devel­op­ing and val­i­dat­ing the sta­bil­i­ty, repeata­bil­i­ty, and over­all qual­i­ty of the fab­ri­ca­tion process­es nec­es­sary for 8‑inch wafer for­mat pro­duc­tion – not to demon­strate high elec­tri­cal per­for­mance of our CNF-MIM capacitors.

Louise Duk­er, Chief Prod­uct Offi­cer at Smoltek Semi. 

Based on the suc­cess­ful results achieved, Smoltek Semi has decid­ed to uti­lize the devel­oped 8‑inch fab­ri­ca­tion process to pro­duce the first lot of CNF-MIM engi­neer­ing sam­ples, incor­po­rat­ing Smoltek’s pro­pri­etary and patent-pro­tect­ed car­bon nanofibers. 

The CNF-MIM engi­neer­ing sam­ples, that are now being man­u­fac­tured in this 8‑inch process are expect­ed by the end of the fourth quar­ter this year. The elec­tri­cal per­for­mance, reli­a­bil­i­ty and process sta­bil­i­ty that Smoltek Semi aims to demon­strate with these CNF-MIM engi­neer­ing sam­ples will pro­vide infor­ma­tion need­ed to take the next step towards a com­mer­cial high-per­form­ing capac­i­tor prod­uct togeth­er with our part­ner YAGEO. 

Devel­op­ment of a more indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion process
This process devel­op­ment is impor­tant for pri­mar­i­ly two rea­sons. The first being the sig­nif­i­cant increase in the num­ber of capac­i­tors we can pro­duce for devel­op­ment pur­pos­es, approx­i­mate­ly 27 000 capac­i­tors on one sin­gle 8‑inch wafer. 

The sheer num­ber makes it pos­si­ble to con­duct more data-dri­ven devel­op­ment, and hence accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment pace towards a com­mer­cial product.

Karl Lun­dahl, COO and Head of R&D at Smoltek Semi. 

The sec­ond rea­son why the 8‑inch form fac­tor is impor­tant is that the for­mat is com­pat­i­ble with high-vol­ume production. 

We are quite con­fi­dent that the 8‑inch wafer for­mat that we now have migrat­ed to in our devel­op­ment will enable us to more effec­tive­ly expe­dite the tech-trans­fer of the fab­ri­ca­tion process­es to a future high-vol­ume pro­duc­tion setting. 

Karl Lun­dahl, concludes.