8‑inch format process for capacitors

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.