Villach, Austria, 20 Jan 2021 — mechatronic systemtechnik, a leading global supplier of automation equipment for semiconductor wafer handling, today announces the availability of the mWL.cs mechatronic calotte loader. A fully automated stand-alone system for transferring wafers between cassettes and calottes, the mWL.cs provides integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) an opportunity to increase yield and improve process traceability at a high throughput.

Evaporation process tools often utilize spherical carriers and rings to meet uniformity and defectivity targets. However, the design of these tools has made it challenging to introduce automated wafer handling in this step of the manufacturing process. IDMs invariably default to manual wafer loading, which has resulted in yield degradation and an increased risk for misprocessing.

“Automating the wafer loading and unloading system for evaporation type metal deposition is a step that bears much potential,” shared Stefan Detterbeck, Sales Director. “By eliminating human error from the equation, our system enables manufacturers to achieve higher yield and reduce damage to wafers. Enhanced process traceability also supports quality improvement measures to meet the conformity requirements of critical customer industries.”

Key features of the mWL.cs mechatronic calotte loader include:
 Superior handling accuracy and repeatability — hand-off position measurement and auto-teaching capabilities (About mechatronic systemtechnik
mechatronic systemtechnik, headquartered in Villach, Austria, is a leading global supplier of automation equipment for semiconductor wafer handling. Founded in 1998, the company specializes in addressing the industry’s needs for reliable, safe, and fully automated handling of non-standard substrates — including stacked, thin, or warped wafers, and also eWLP, MEMS, TAIKO, bumped, and film frames. Through a modular approach, mechatronic offers its customers cost-efficient handling systems that feature its proprietary technology. These solutions are capable of accommodating a wide range of substrate types and their specific characteristics. Major OEMs and fabrication plants across the globe rely on mechatronic’s unique solutions for some of their most complex wafer handling needs.

For more information, please visit www.mechatronic.at or connect with us on social media:

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/mechatronic-systemtechnik
YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/MechatronicAustria

mechatronic systemtechnik is a subsidiary of Accuron Industrial Technologies.

Editorial Contact:

Ms Gracine Wee | e: [email protected] | t: +65 6220 4787

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Wilmington, Mass., December 16, 2020 – Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE: ONTO) today announced the first customer acceptance and purchase of its new product, the Aspect^® System, at one of the top three memory manufacturers of leading-edge 3D-NAND devices. After successful factory demonstrations, additional Aspect systems are shipping this quarter and in the first quarter of 2021 for evaluations at leading 3D-NAND manufacturers. All of these customers are expected to utilize the high-speed capabilities of the Aspect System to accurately measure extremely deep, high aspect ratio channel holes used to connect over 128 layers and support development and production of customers’ next generation 174 - 192 layer stacked-pair devices. The Company expects additional applications to emerge as this revolutionary infrared critical dimension (IRCD) technology is moved into production environments.

“In 3D-NAND devices the high aspect ratio etch steps are the most critical process steps for performance and yield,” said Kevin Heidrich, senior vice president of product marketing at Onto Innovation. “The highest capital intensity in advanced 3D-NAND is for these critical etchers, with hundreds of etch chambers in a line. Leveraging ultra-bright source technology and a proprietary optical design, the Aspect System will ensure precise control of these critical steps across the fleet of etch tools at high volume production throughput.”

Heidrich continued, “Compared to traditional optical critical dimension (OCD) technology, the IRCD system exploits the unique optical properties of common semiconductor fab materials in the mid-infrared range to enable high fidelity measurements of these high aspect ratio features. We are engaged with customers to improve productivity and yield of 128 pair devices and accelerate the development of next generation 192 pair devices ramping next year.” 

The Aspect System is the industry’s first in-line solution for metrology of high aspect ratio features at high-volume manufacturing speeds. When combined with Onto Innovation’s AI-Diffract^™ Software, the Aspect System provides high fidelity profile measurements enabling critical process control with speeds approximately 10 times faster than X-ray diffraction systems typically used in R&D lab applications. The Aspect System provides unique sensitivity across 3D-NAND manufacturing processes for control of key etch, deposition, and cleaning steps that are critical to next generation 3D-NAND devices.

Typical 3D-NAND wafers contain hundreds of millions of channel holes that are approximately 100nm in diameter and up to 8,000nm deep (80:1 aspect ratio). The Aspect System can measure an array of holes in a single measurement, which allows a greater sampling size across the entire wafer at production throughputs, making the Aspect System a highly beneficial inline metrology solution. The Aspect System works as part of Onto Innovation’s ecosystem of total process control solutions, leveraging the capability of the new AI-Diffract analysis suite.

About Onto Innovation Inc.

Onto Innovation is a leader in process control, combining global scale with an expanded portfolio of leading-edge technologies that include: Un-patterned wafer quality; 3D metrology spanning chip features from nanometer scale transistors to large die interconnects; macro defect inspection of wafers and packages; metal interconnect composition; factory analytics; and lithography for advanced semiconductor packaging. Our breadth of offerings across the entire semiconductor value chain helps our customers solve their most difficult yield, device performance, quality, and reliability issues. Onto Innovation strives to optimize customers’ critical path of progress by making them smarter, faster and more efficient. Headquartered in Wilmington, Massachusetts, Onto Innovation supports customers with a worldwide sales and service organization. Additional information can be found at www.ontoinnovation.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the “Act”) which include: Onto Innovation’s business momentum and future growth; the benefit to customers of Onto Innovation’s products; Onto Innovation’s ability to both deliver products and services consistent with our customers’ demands and expectations and strengthen its market position; as well as other matters that are not purely historical data. Onto Innovation wishes to take advantage of the “safe harbor” provided for by the Act and cautions that actual results may differ materially from those projected as a result of various factors, including risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Onto Innovation’s control. Such factors include, but are not limited to, the length, severity and potential business impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Company’s ability to leverage its resources to improve its position in its core markets; its ability to weather difficult economic environments; its ability to open new market opportunities and target high-margin markets; the strength/weakness of the back-end and/or front-end semiconductor market segments; fluctuations in customer capital spending and any potential impact as a result of the novel coronavirus situation. Additional information and considerations regarding the risks faced by Onto Innovation are available in Onto Innovation’s Form 10-K report for the year ended December 31, 2019 and other lings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As the forward-looking statements are based on Onto Innovation’s current expectations, the Company cannot guarantee any related future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Onto Innovation does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.

###

Source: Onto Innovation Inc.

Contacts:

Michael Sheaffer, +1 978.253.6273

[email protected]

• Read more about Product News: Onto Innovation Announces First Customer Qualification of New Aspect® IRCD System

Product News: Onto Innovation Announces New Inspection Platform for Leading-Edge Process Control and Device Reliability

Onto Innovation’s latest inspection advances have resulted in multiple orders from a top 3 OSAT and a top 3 image sensor manufacturer

Wilmington, Mass., January 12, 2021 – Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE: ONTO) today announced the availability of its new Dragonfly^® G3 inspection platform designed to meet the most advanced 2D and 3D sensitivity requirements for advanced packaging and specialty device manufacturers. The first Dragonfly G3 system was delivered to a leading OSAT partner in the fourth quarter of 2020. Orders received from a leading CMOS image sensor (CIS) manufacturer will be shipped in the first quarter of 2021 along with additional evaluation units to logic and memory customers.

The Dragonfly G3 platform includes a newly designed optical system with sub-micron resolution, greatly improving 2D defect detection capability in either bright field, dark field or Clearfind^® illumination modes. In addition to greater sensitivity, the system scans more than 30% faster than the previous platform. It also utilizes a redesigned 3D metrology system called the LT-200, using a revolutionary dual head design that improves the 3D bump measurement throughput up to 50%. Onto Innovation software further differentiates this solution with Discover^® Defect software, which provides a process control suite in real time for an expanding range of complex applications in 5G, high-performance computing, and complex DRAM packages.

Dr. Ju Jin, vice president and general manager of Onto Innovation’s inspection business said, “This new suite of products provides our leading-edge customers with the technology they need to develop and produce high performance products in two rapidly growing markets: high-end specialty devices; and advanced system-in-packages also referred to as chiplets. In these markets we have seen rapid reductions in feature sizes.  These reductions require more sensitive tools providing repeatable and accurate data.

“The growing specialty device market, which includes next-generation power devices, RF filters, amplifiers, CIS and lidar sensors, now requires process control equipment beyond the capabilities of legacy systems in order to detect smaller and new defect types,” Jin continued. “The capabilities of the new Dragonfly platform were an important factor in our recent win at a second high-end CIS manufacturer. The incumbent tools were unable to see these low contrast defects of interest on critical layers. Our new optical resolution demonstrated that it was able to detect these defects repeatably at high volume manufacturing speed to improve yield.”

Kevin Heidrich, senior vice president of marketing added, “The advanced packaging market is exploding with a wide variety of packaging technologies and architectures. Manufacturers now require a single comprehensive system, that can handle 2D and 3D inspection and detect flaws that may cause early life failure. Our sub-micron sensitivity is critical for complex packaging designs requiring redistribution lines (RDL) approaching 1µm design rules. The Dragonfly G3 system is also enhanced by updated Clearfind technology.  With new optics and advanced image processing algorithms, the new version of Clearfind can find a greater range of photoresist and chemical residues at faster speeds. Clearfind technology continues to expand in the market with more IDMs, foundries and OSATS adopting it to control their fan-out and pad-to-pad bonding processes. This exclusive technology is only available from Onto Innovation and is becoming inevitable for chip reliability, not just yield control.” 

Kevin continued, “In addition to faster and more accurate data acquisitions, customers want to make real time and data-driven decisions. Our release of TrueADC^® AI, which includes our proprietary multi-engine deep learning approach with the Dragonfly G3 platform, provides a complete solution for our customers. This solution has improved upon the rate of misclassifications by 30-50% while still outperforming manual classification rates by over 400%. This solution results in higher quality yield, and less scrap, complementing factory environmental missions around the world.”

With its increased scale, Onto Innovation is supporting customers with timely solutions to achieve their leading-edge product development and production. By working collaboratively with our customers, the new Dragonfly G3 inspection platform has already demonstrated it meets current and near future requirements for both 2D inspection and 3D metrology.

About Onto Innovation Inc.

Onto Innovation is a leader in process control, combining global scale with an expanded portfolio of leading-edge technologies that include: Un-patterned wafer quality; 3D metrology spanning chip features from nanometer scale transistors to large die interconnects; macro defect inspection of wafers and packages; elemental layer composition; overlay metrology; factory analytics; and lithography for advanced semiconductor packaging. Our breadth of offerings across the entire semiconductor value chain helps our customers solve their most difficult yield, device performance, quality, and reliability issues. Onto Innovation strives to optimize customers’ critical path of progress by making them smarter, faster and more efficient. Headquartered in Wilmington, Massachusetts, Onto Innovation supports customers with a worldwide sales and service organization. Additional information can be found at www.ontoinnovation.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the “Act”) which include: Onto Innovation’s business momentum and future growth; the benefit to customers of Onto Innovation’s products; Onto Innovation’s ability to both deliver products and services consistent with our customers’ demands and expectations and strengthen its market position; as well as other matters that are not purely historical data. Onto Innovation wishes to take advantage of the “safe harbor” provided for by the Act and cautions that actual results may differ materially from those projected as a result of various factors, including risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Onto Innovation’s control. Such factors include, but are not limited to, the length, severity and potential business impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Company’s ability to leverage its resources to improve its position in its core markets; its ability to weather difficult economic environments; its ability to open new market opportunities and target high-margin markets; the strength/weakness of the back-end and/or front-end semiconductor market segments; fluctuations in customer capital spending and any potential impact as a result of the novel coronavirus situation. Additional information and considerations regarding the risks faced by Onto Innovation are available in Onto Innovation’s Form 10-K report for the year ended December 31, 2019 and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As the forward-looking statements are based on Onto Innovation’s current expectations, the Company cannot guarantee any related future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Onto Innovation does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.

• Read more about Onto Innovation Announces New Inspection Platform

MILPITAS, Calif. ─ January 18, 2021 – The global economy will return to pre-pandemic growth levels in 2021 as the world begins an uneven gross domestic product rebound, marking the start of an expansion that will see the semiconductor industry grow to $1 trillion in chip sales in the early 2030s, speakers at the Virtual SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) last week revealed. Conference content is now available to attendees on demand until February 13, 2021.

Citibank Managing Director and Global Chief Economist Catherine Mann said that global GDP is expected to return to a 5% growth rate this year and rise to more than 7% in late 2021 or 2022 on the back of the widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines, though the 2021 net gain will be slight after the 4% contraction last year. The United States and China, together accounting for 50% of global GDP, will drive much of the recovery. China has regained its pre-pandemic GDP growth rate and the U.S. is not far behind, with projections that the world’s largest economy will normalize growth in the second quarter of 2021. The prospects reflect consensus forecasts of economists polled by Citigroup.

Europe, the world’s third largest economy, is not expected to restore economic growth to typical levels until the fourth quarter of 2022. Among emerging markets, Latin America is forecast to return to pre-COVID growth no sooner than 2023, with those in Asia riding the coattails of China to a faster recovery. Mann said that trade growth across the world’s economies will also “remain asynchronous.” Global trade was flat in 2018 and 2019 after the outbreak of trade wars and collapsed 20% in the depths of COVID-19 last year. This year, trade is forecast to return to zero growth.

Global Semiconductor Revenue to Grow in 2021

The return to economic growth is expected to spark an expansion of the semiconductor industry. Worldwide semiconductor revenue is set to rise as much as 7% in 2021, with 5G deployments and PCs for remote work and learning among the key drivers, Mario Morales, Program Vice President of Enabling Technologies and Semiconductors, Storage, and DataSphere Research at International Data Corporation (IDC), said at the Jan. 12-13 SEMI event. IDC forecasts show semiconductor revenue increasing to $450 billion this year and returning to $500 billion in market size in 2024, with steady annual growth between 4% and 6%.

Accelerating spending “across the board” on Information Communications Technology (ICT) will be a key catalyst of the expansion, Morales said. The ICT segment includes mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, big data analytics, robotics, security and artificial intelligence (AI). In sector growth, computing and mobile handsets will be standouts with a 4.5% CAGR over the next four years. In the computing segment – spanning data centers, PCs and peripherals – IDC forecasts growth to $170 billion, while the firm expects the mobile handsets segment to reach $144 billion by 2024.

5G, IT Infrastructure, Memory Capacity Buildout Among Key Drivers of Chip Industry Growth

Cloud computing will be a key force behind chip industry growth in 2021 as cloud infrastructure buildouts drive higher server demand stemming from the pandemic-inspired surge in online shopping and increasing adoption of the public cloud, said Andrea Lati, Vice President of Market Research at VLSI Research. A doubling of 5G smartphone shipments and surging 5G base station deployments following the 2020 slowdown will also fuel the semiconductor industry expansion this year. One big contributor: 5G smartphones feature at least 50% more silicon than 4G models.

Lati said semiconductor industry sales will increase 8% this year as memory leads the recovery, with DRAM and NAND forecast to grow 13% and 12%, respectively. The global IT infrastructure buildout, 5nm demand ramp, and continuing liquidity measures by central banks will also help power industry growth in 2021. Lati predicted a bright future for the chip industry as technology figures prominently in much of global economic growth over the next 10 years. Equipment and semiconductor sales are expected to reach $200 billion and $1 trillion, respectively, in the early 2030s.

The SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) examines global economic, technology, market, business and geo-political developments influencing the global electronics manufacturing industry along with their implications for your strategic business decisions. For more than 35 years, ISS has been the premier semiconductor conference for senior executives to acquire the latest trend data, technology highlights and industry perspective to support business decisions, customer strategies and the pursuit of greater profitability.

About SEMI

SEMI® connects more than 2,400 member companies and 1.3 million professionals worldwide to advance the technology and business of electronics design and manufacturing. SEMI members are responsible for the innovations in materials, design, equipment, software, devices, and services that enable smarter, faster, more powerful, and more affordable electronic products. Electronic System Design Alliance (ESD Alliance), FlexTech, the Fab Owners Alliance (FOA) and the MEMS & Sensors Industry Group (MSIG) are SEMI Strategic Technology Communities, defined communities within SEMI focused on specific technologies. Visit www.semi.org to learn more, contact one of our worldwide offices, and connect with SEMI on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Association Contact

Michael Hall/SEMI 
Email: [email protected] 
Phone: 1.408.943.7988

• Read more about Virtual ISS 2021 Annual Outlooks Point to Global Economic and Chip Industry Growth