ESPOO, Finland, 23rd November 2020 – Picosun Group, the leading supplier of AGILE ALD® (Atomic Layer Deposition) thin film coating solutions, partners with prominent Chinese hospitals and researchers to apply medical ALD technology for safer surgical procedures.

Picosun’s biocompatible ALD coatings will be applied on electrosurgical equipment (electrotomes) to improve their performance, safety, and service life.

“It’s great to collaborate with a company such as Picosun to develop solutions for safer and more patient-friendly surgeries. Picosun is the leader in medical ALD solutions. The company has extensive process portfolio for biocompatible ALD materials and their equipment are at use at several medical equipment manufacturers around the world. In China, Picosun is the market leader with numerous PICOSUN® ALD systems installed throughout the country. We have strong trust that this collaboration will result in disruptive new innovations and novel solutions for surgical equipment,” says Longsheng Lu, Professor of South China University of Technology.

Electrotome utilizes high temperature to cut and separate tissue, with simultaneously coagulating blood, and it’s a standard equipment replacing traditional mechanical scalpels in many operations. Tissue and blood sticking and burning on the electrotome blade is a serious problem because the crusted blade risks increased bleeding, tissue damage, tearing and scarring, thus making the patient’s healing time longer. Smoke from the burning tissue may also hinder the surgeon’s vision and increase the risk for error during delicate procedures such as cardiac or neurosurgery.

This far, there hasn’t been a working solution in the market to overcome this problem. ALD technology can potentially provide this solution and thus improve patient safety, wound quality and healing time. ALD forms ultra-thin, pinhole-free coatings with unmatched conformality over the smallest microscale details of the surface, and the ALD process can be performed at moderate temperatures so the method is suitable also for sensitive materials. Deposited over special anti-adhesive micropatterning of the electrotome blade, biocompatible ALD film prevents blood and tissue from sticking to the blade.

“We are happy to extend our PicoMEDICAL™ technology to a yet new healthcare application, and to work with top tier Chinese hospitals and scientists to qualify our solutions in everyday use. ALD is revolutionizing the medical field right now, just like it did to semiconductor industries over a decade ago. We at Picosun want to use our extensive ALD know-how to develop solutions to improve people’s health and quality of life, which is why medical ALD is one of our key markets for the future,” continues Dr. Jani Kivioja, CTO of Picosun Group.

Picosun provides the most advanced AGILE ALD® (Atomic Layer Deposition) thin film coating solutions for global industries. Picosun’s ALD solutions enable technological leap into the future, with turn-key production processes and unmatched, pioneering expertise in the field – dating back to the invention of the technology itself. Today, PICOSUN® ALD equipment are in daily manufacturing use in numerous leading industries around the world. Picosun is based in Finland, with subsidiaries in Germany, USA, China mainland and Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and South Korea, offices in India and France, and a world-wide sales and support network. Visit www.picosun.com.

The project “Design of anti-adhesive surface modified with bionic microstructures and ALD coatings and its application on surgical electrotomes” is carried out in collaboration with SCUT (South China University of Technology), PLAGH (General Hospital of the People's Liberation Army), Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital, and Guangzhou First People’s Hospital. The project will start on 1st December 2020 and continue for 3 years. The project is partially funded by Business Finland.

More information:
Dr. Jani Kivioja
CTO, Picosun Group
Tel: +358 46 922 8804
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.picosun.com

• Read more about Picosun’s medical ALD solutions enable safer surgeries

ESPOO, Finland, 19th October 2020 – The Chairman of the Board and founder of Picosun Group, Mr. Kustaa Poutiainen, has been awarded as Finland’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2020. Mr. Poutiainen received the National Entrepreneur Award in the annual meeting of the Federation of Finnish Enterprises in Jyväskylä on 17th October. The award is given every year to four Finnish entrepreneurs as a recognition of exceptional entrepreneurship.

Picosun provides ALD (Atomic Layer Deposition) thin film coating solutions to global microelectronics and other industries. ALD was invented in Finland in 1974 by Picosun Board Member Dr. Tuomo Suntola, who in 2018 received the Millennium Technology Prize in recognition of his invention. ALD is a mature, key enabling technology in today’s semiconductor manufacturing, realizing the development of modern microelectronics according to the Moore’s Law. ALD is expanding rapidly to other fields of industry as well, and it is expected to bring a fundamental disruption especially to healthcare technologies, where Picosun’s PicoMEDICAL™ solutions have already enabled several new innovations.

“Even if we had great premises to start manufacturing ALD equipment, not everyone believed in us in the beginning. Our personnel did and showed what they are capable of. It has taken us to a path of excellent growth,” says Poutiainen.

Picosun’s first customers, when the company entered the ALD business in 2004, were universities and research institutes. Now, the world’s leading electronics manufacturers and other companies turn to Picosun when they need the most advanced thin film coating technology to stay spearheading their own industries. Even in the middle of the global pandemic, Picosun’s turnover is expected to grow 50%, which is remarkably higher than the market’s average of 15%.

“Since day one, our vision was to be the best in the world. We have already achieved this with our R&D ALD tools, and now we are heading further. We invest a significant amount of our turnover in development of our ALD solutions and our personnel so that we can always exceed the expectations of our customers. It is an honor to receive the National Entrepreneurship Award of Finland, and it is an honor to be a part in steering Picosun towards the future, which looks very bright indeed,” continues Poutiainen.

“The whole Picosun team wants to congratulate our Chairman, Kustaa Poutiainen, on this prestigious award. We are very proud of his significant contributions and role in enabling the international breakthrough of Finnish originated ALD technology. I am sure that the entire global ALD community appreciates his efforts and joins our congratulations,” summarizes Mr. Jussi Rautee, CEO of Picosun Group.

More information:
Mr. Jussi Rautee
CEO, Picosun Group
Tel: +358 50 345 4457
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.picosun.com

• Read more about Picosun’s success brings Chairman of the Board Kustaa Poutiainen the National Entrepreneur Award of Finland 2020

ESPOO, Finland, 6th October 2020 – Picosun Group, the leading supplier of AGILE ALD® (Atomic Layer Deposition) thin film coating solutions for global industries, strengthens its position in power electronics market with several cluster ALD system sales to prominent manufacturers in Europe, USA and Asia.

“Power electronics is an important, fast growing market for Picosun. ALD has potential to solve various challenges manufacturers are facing in this field, and our solutions have enabled our customers to create significant added value in terms of device quality and throughput. At Picosun, we have developed several turn-key production ALD solutions specifically for 4-8 inch wafer markets such as power devices. Especially our cluster ALD systems, such as the PICOSUN® Morpher which we launched last year, have been extremely well received by our customers,” says Juhana Kostamo, Head of Customer Solutions/Deputy CEO of Picosun.

Power components are crucial in a wide range of applications from consumer electronics to transportation, energy production and distribution, including renewables such as wind and solar power generation. These components are typically manufactured on 4-8 inch compound semiconductor wafers such as GaN and SiC. These materials provide various benefits compared to pure silicon, for example higher electron mobility, higher threshold voltage, and ability to operate at higher temperatures. Challenges do exist, however, as GaN and SiC power devices are prone to high interface trap density (leading to parasitic currents and reduced electron mobility) and gate leakage current, and poor threshold voltage stability.

Interface trap density can be reduced by combining pre-cleaning methods with high permittivity, large bandgap insulators. High quality, defect-free high-k dielectric layers such as Al2O3, AlN or ZrO2 etc. are key in reducing power devices’ gate leakage current and to improve electron mobility and threshold voltage stability. A good example here are GaN-based HEMTs (high electron mobility transistors), which are important in various large scale practical applications, and which require efficient gate insulation and surface passivation to achieve optimal functionality.

ALD stands as a superior deposition method here compared to other thin film coating technologies such as PECVD, as ALD produces the most conformal, uniform, and defect-free films with accurate, digitally repeatable thickness control and sharp interfaces. With the right selection of ALD deposition equipment, even multilayer processing is possible i.e. various functional material layers and/or stacked films/nanolaminates can be manufactured in one process run.

PICOSUN® Morpher is a disruptive ALD production platform designed for up to 8 inch wafer industries such as power electronics, MEMS, sensors, LEDs, lasers, optics, and 5G components. Morpher’s operational agility makes the system adaptable to various and changing manufacturing needs, on all business verticals from corporate internal R&D to production and foundry manufacturing, where both the end products and/or customers’ requirements may change rapidly. Morpher can handle several substrate materials, batch and substrate sizes, and ALD materials with leading process quality. Multilayer deposition is possible, and cluster design allows integration of also other processing units such as pre-clean, RIE etc. for fully automated, high throughput continuous vacuum operation.

“In its versatility and transformability, Morpher is the epitome of our principle ‘Agile ALD’. Innovation, constant development and improvement of our ALD solutions to enable our customers’ success is our driving force at Picosun. This applies also to Morpher platform and we have some truly exciting additions to this product family coming in the near future,” summarizes Kostamo.

About Picosun
Picosun provides the most advanced AGILE ALD® (Atomic Layer Deposition) thin film coating solutions for global industries. Picosun’s ALD solutions enable technological leap into the future, with turn-key production processes and unmatched, pioneering expertise in the field – dating back to the invention of the technology itself. Today, PICOSUN® ALD equipment are in daily manufacturing use in numerous leading industries around the world. Picosun is based in Finland, with subsidiaries in Germany, USA, Singapore, Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan, offices in India and France, and a world-wide sales and support network. Visit www.picosun.com.

More information:
Juhana Kostamo
Head of Customer Solutions/Deputy CEO, Picosun Group
Tel: +358 50 3699 565
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.picosun.com

• Read more about Picosun’s cluster ALD solutions enable next generation power electronics

ESPOO, Finland, 24th September 2020 – Picosun Group, the leading supplier of AGILE ALD® (Atomic Layer Deposition) thin film coating technology, reports excellent results in UVC (ultraviolet-C) LED performance, achieved with the company’s ALD solutions.

Excellent reliability and lifetime improvements of UVC LEDs have been obtained at Picosun’s customer and collaboration partner site, National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), Taiwan, using passivation and barrier films deposited with PICOSUN® ALD equipment(*). ALD passivation layer could potentially replace the expensive hermetic seal package of the LEDs and thus lower the costs of the final device.

“We have used Picosun’s ALD technology already for years with great success. Our PICOSUN® ALD equipment yields superior quality films which has helped us to achieve several breakthroughs in our LED research. Picosun has local presence in Taiwan and we appreciate the prompt response of their customer support if we ever have any issues. At the phase when R&D results are to be ramped up to industrial-level production, the scalability of Picosun’s ALD technology is a huge benefit,” comments Professor Hao-Chung Kuo from NCTU.

In order to reach maximum light output and long operating lifetime, LED chips require surface passivation to eliminate parasitic currents caused by traps and defects. Also barrier coating is typically needed as LED materials are sensitive to moisture. ALD is an ideal technique to manufacture both the passivation and barrier films – and when the LED size diminishes to micrometer dimensions, the only coating method capable of producing high enough quality films on the required minuscule scale. Ultra-thin, pinhole-free ALD films do not suppress the LED light intensity and they provide reliable protection against ambient conditions, whereas their superior conformality ensures no thickness variations between the facets of the LED chip. Thickness variations, typical side effect of other coating methods, can potentially lead to uneven distribution of film stress or thermal expansion behavior and risk physical damage of the chip.

Short-wavelength UVC radiation destroys bacteria and viruses so UVC LED technology is particularly topical now during the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Small, lightweight LEDs enable versatile design of portable, compact disinfecting equipment, they consume less power than other UVC sources, they are durable, and they pose no risk of hazardous material leaks such as e.g. mercury lamps.

“We are happy of the achievements of Professor Kuo’s group at NCTU, and how Picosun’s ALD technology has helped them to achieve their goals in UVC LED development. Our long-term collaboration and networking with both the academia and prominent industries in this field gives us the perfect synergy advantage to facilitate implementation of these solutions in industrial manufacturing,” says Mr. Edwin Wu, CEO of Picosun Asia Pte. Ltd.

(*) UVC LED with 50 nm ALD Al2O3 passivation and normal LED packaging (no hermetic seal) maintained 80% of its original efficiency even after 500 hours environmental test at 85% humidity and 85 oC temperature.

About Picosun
Picosun provides the most advanced AGILE ALD® (Atomic Layer Deposition) thin film coating solutions for global industries. Picosun’s ALD solutions enable technological leap into the future, with turn-key production processes and unmatched, pioneering expertise in the field – dating back to the invention of the technology itself. Today, PICOSUN® ALD equipment are in daily manufacturing use in numerous leading industries around the world. Picosun is based in Finland, with subsidiaries in Germany, USA, Singapore, Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan, offices in India and France, and a world-wide sales and support network. Visit www.picosun.com.

More information:
Mr. Edwin Wu
CEO, Picosun Asia Pte. Ltd.
Tel: +358 40 480 3449
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.picosun.com

• Read more about Picosun’s ALD technology boosts UVC LED performance

MRSI launches submicron die bonding solution for silicon photonics, co-packaging, and wafer-level packaging

At CIOE 2020 MRSI Systems will introduce a new product, MRSI-S-HVM high-speed, flexible 0.5 micrometer die bonder for silicon photonics, co-packaging electronic and photonic chips, and wafer-level packaging.

This advanced die bonder is based upon MRSI’s field proven high-speed HVM die bonder platform for high-volume manufacturing of integrated photonics that requires ultimate accuracy at the submicron level. It has inherited the speed using multiple levels of parallel processing from the HVM platform. It also has the HVM’s high level of flexibility for multiple die applications using auto-tool changing and multiple process applications with eutectic, epoxy stamping and dispensing in one machine.

The MRSI-S-HVM flexibility is elevated to another level with the capability to switch automatically between two modes of accuracies - 0.5 micrometer and 1.5 micrometer. The 0.5 micrometer mode uses a real-time alignment mechanism facilitated by the on-axis z-force bonding for the best possible co-planarity and final accuracy. For flip-chip bonding, it aligns the features on the bonding surfaces of the die and the carrier. This eliminates the expensive step for the customer to make alignment fiducials on both top and bottom sides of a chip during wafer fabrication, and it also eliminates the subsequent die bonder alignment step in order to calibrate the top and bottom surface of the chip. All these advantages are essential for volume manufacturing capability for those emerging applications.

The MRSI-S-HVM die bonder is capable of chip-on-wafer (CoW) process with dies from III-V wafer being picked, placed, and bonded onto a silicon wafer (12 inches) including fine lateral motions. It can also be applied to chip-on-interposer (CoI) and chip-on-substrate (CoS). Three heating options are available including high-density top heating eutectic bonding, bottom thermal heating, and MRSI’s proprietary bottom laser soldering solution, avoiding secondary reflow of adjacent chips, and improving UPH.

“The addition of this new submicron die bonder product family re-enforces MRSI’s industry-leading position in the field of manufacturing automation for advanced optoelectronics devices. We look forward to working with customers to help them to scale at this improved level of accuracy without compromising speed or flexibility,” said Dr. Yi Qian, VP & GM MRSI Systems, Mycronic.

To schedule an appointment and discuss a prototype demonstration, please contact us at [email protected].

For additional information, please contact:
Dr. Limin Zhou
Senior Director, Strategic Marketing, MRSI Systems
Tel: +86 135 0289 9401, e-mail: [email protected]
Time Zone: CST – China Standard Time

About MRSI Systems
MRSI Systems, part of Mycronic Group, is the leading manufacturer of fully automated, high-speed, high-precision and flexible eutectic and epoxy die bonding systems. We offer “one-stop-shop” solutions for research and development, low-to-medium volume production, and high- volume manufacturing of photonic devices such as lasers, detectors, modulators, AOCs, WDM/EML TO-Cans, Optical transceivers, LiDAR, VR/AR, sensors, and optical imaging products. With 30+ years of industry experience and our worldwide local technical support team, we provide the most effective systems and assembly solutions for all packaging levels including chip-on-wafer (CoW), chip-on-carrier (CoC), PCB, and gold-box packaging. For more information visit www.mrsisystems.com

About Mycronic
Mycronic AB is a Swedish high-tech company engaged in the development, manufacture and marketing of production equipment with high precision and flexibility requirements for the electronics industry. Mycronic headquarters are located in Täby, north of Stockholm and the Group has subsidiaries in China, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and the United States. Mycronic AB (publ) is listed on NASDAQ Stockholm. www.mycronic.com

• Read more about MRSI launches submicron die bonding solution for silicon photonics, co-packaging, and wafer-level packaging

ESPOO, Finland, 31st August 2020 – Picosun Group’s growth strategy is based on strong expansion into industrial ALD markets. To support this strategy, special emphasis has been placed on strengthening the Group’s global service organization. The investment has paid itself back in the form of high level of customer satisfaction, despite the challenges caused by the global covid-19 pandemic especially in traveling and logistics.

“Due to the reinforced localization of our service and support units, our service engineers’ utilization level has been more than 85% in the past six months, and with the latest remote service and support tools we have gained advantage to manage our customers’ PICOSUN® ALD system commissionings online and in time. ALD tool maintenances, process development, spare parts and other critical deliveries are also provided locally with maximum safety precautions in place, to ensure customers continuous operation of their PICOSUN® ALD equipment,” states Mr. Timo Malinen, Customer Experience Director of Picosun Group.

During the last months, Picosun Group has hired and trained several new service engineers and sales and support personnel to provide local support at the Group’s US, Asian, and European locations. Remote diagnostics, control, and data logging features for remote troubleshooting and process optimization of customers’ PICOSUN® ALD tools are a routine approach in the Group’s ALD solution deliveries. Augmented and/or virtual reality solutions for even more efficient service operations and remote learning/e-training possibilities are also under development and will be introduced in all Picosun’s operations later on.

“Our principle of ‘AGILE ALD’ and our position as the technological forerunner in our field obligate us to provide the best possible services and solutions to our customers. As a globally operating company, pandemic risk scenarios are an integral part of our continuous risk planning. Against the backdrop of the current covid-19 outbreak, our service operations are continuously being adapted to mitigate potential impacts. Picosun Group follows a holistic management process that enables constant development of our customer service unit to ensure the best possible response even in an emergency situation,” continues Malinen.

For Picosun, the health of employees and customers is the highest priority. In order to closely monitor and manage the covid-19 situation, Picosun follows all the safety regulations provided by WHO, CDC, ECDC, and Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, and provides the necessary information timely to all employees, customers, and other stakeholders.

Picosun provides the most advanced AGILE ALD® (Atomic Layer Deposition) thin film coating solutions for global industries. Picosun’s ALD solutions enable technological leap into the future, with turn-key production processes and unmatched, pioneering expertise in the field – dating back to the invention of the technology itself. Today, PICOSUN® ALD equipment are in daily manufacturing use in numerous leading industries around the world. Picosun is based in Finland, with subsidiaries in Germany, USA, Singapore, Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan, offices in India and France, and a world-wide sales and support network. Visit www.picosun.com.

More information:
Mr. Timo Malinen
Customer Experience Director, Picosun Group
Tel. +358 40 5011 860
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.picosun.com

• Read more about High customer satisfaction with Picosun’s new service and support model