ESPOO, Finland, 3rd of February 2022 – Picosun Group and Shincron Co., Ltd. have joined forces for development and commercialization of Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) for optical coatings. ALD technology provides uniform and conformal coatings to the even most challenging structures and is therefore well suited for high-end optical applications.

The R&D teams from both companies have worked together to tailor existing ALD processes optimizing them for the use in optical applications. In addition to standard ALD optical films, ALD magnesium fluoride (MgF2) has been researched and is now available for commercial use for the first time. So far, ALD MgF2 processes have been only presented in academic research by universities and science institutes. MgF2 is a desired material in optical applications due to its low refractive index at visible light and high transmittance in FUV optical region. It can be used as a single layer or as part of an optical stack combining low and high refractive index materials. It has also other features, such as barrier properties and high chemical stability, which bring big advantages in some applications.

The collaboration agreement was first signed in 2019 including the appointment of Shincron as Picosun’s sales representative and ALD product distributor in Japan. The collaboration was extended with Joint Development Agreement (JDA) in 2020 with the aim to develop novel and advanced ALD coatings for optical applications.

“We are very excited about the collaboration. The teamwork has been fruitful, and the results obtained now are excellent. We see optical coatings as one of the emerging ALD applications and believe in strong growth in this market”, says Jussi Rautee, CEO of Picosun.

“We are happy to add ALD technology to our offering. This way we can increase our services for our customers. We have set up a demo capability for ALD optical coatings and Japanese optical companies have shown high interest for this process”, says Masaya Narita, CEO of Shincron.

Read more: picosun.com/optics/magnesiumfluoride

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

Masaya Narita
CEO, Shincron Co., Ltd.
Tel: +81 45 650 2411
Email: [email protected]
www.shincron.co.jp/en/

About Picosun
Picosun provides the most advanced 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, Japan, South Korea, China mainland and Taiwan, offices in India and France, and a world-wide sales and support network. Visit www.picosun.com.

About Shincron
Shincron is a leading global supplier of innovative vacuum thin film deposition equipment. Visit www.shincron.co.jp/en/ for more information.

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Cranston, RI USA - Technic is proud to announce its commitment to the MATQu project, which aims to drive materials and technology options for quantum computing by bringing together leading European companies, academia, and consortia. As demand for complex computing and ever-increasing volumes of data continue to grow, quantum computing is a key emerging technology. Technic’s breadth of technology offerings in electrochemistry and semiconductor surface preparation, cleaning and etching afford a unique opportunity to accelerate development in this exciting field.

“MATQu – Materials for Quantum Computing”, led by the joint business office of the Fraunhofer Group for Microelectronics and the Research Fab Microelectronics Germany (GS VUE/FMD) as well as Fraunhofer IAF, started in June 2021 intending to support the creation of a Pan-European research infrastructure for advanced computing technologies. The project brings together world-class European research and technology organizations, industrial fabrication facilities, and leading application partners in the domain of solid-state qubits — a subject of intense global competition — to realize the vision of a European supply chain for materials and processes.

The project will create a European eco-system to expand the applicability of core components of solid-state qubits—such as Superconducting Josephson junctions (SJJs)—by improving materials, as well as processing and characterization technologies for quantum computing hardware. In the three-year project, SJJs is the primary use case as they are currently the most mature solid-state platform to realize stable superconducting qubits.

The main technical goal of the project “MATQu” is to improve and transfer materials and technologies for superconducting qubits from laboratories to the market. Several project partners have extensive infrastructures suited for this purpose and will contribute with their expertise in materials, process integration, and research to build robust and reproducible qubits. Industry-style fabrication infrastructures will allow optimizing process parameters and systematically improving the performance of superconducting qubits.

“As demand for complex computing and ever-increasing volumes of data continue to grow, quantum computing is a key emerging technology. Technic’s breadth of offerings in electrochemistry and semiconductor surface preparation, cleaning and etching afford a unique opportunity to accelerate development in this exciting field.”

- Douglas Holmes, Global Business Development Manager of Semiconductor Technology

Technic supplies some of the most advanced solutions for semiconductor fabrication and packaging in the industry including electroplating chemistry, photoresist strippers, cleaners (post-etch residue removers), metal etchants, and high purity wet chemistry, as well as manufacturing equipment and analytical controls.

Learn more about Technic Semiconductor products at https://www.technic.com/applications/semiconductor/semiconductor-fabric… or contact us at (401) 781-6100

About Technic
For over 75 years, Technic has been a global supplier of specialty chemicals, custom finishing equipment, engineered powders, and analytical control systems to the semiconductor, electronic component, printed circuit board, industrial finishing, and decorative industries. Technic is also a major supplier of engineered metal powders to the solar industry.

• Read more about Technic joins MATQu – European based project for quantum computing hardware eco-system

• Read more about PEER Group celebrates 30th anniversary

ESPOO, Finland, 18th of January 2022 – Picosun takes part as an industrial partner in QuTI, a recently launched extensive research project aiming to develop new components, manufacturing and testing solutions that are needed in quantum technology. Quantum technology has gained interest in a vast array of industries on a large scale. The remarkable performance improvements it offers enable for example powerful computing and benefits in communications, healthcare, sensors, imaging and measurement applications.

The QuTI project is coordinated by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, and it has a total budget of around 10 million euros. Other industrial partners of the consortium include Bluefors, Afore, IQM, Rockley Photonics, CSC, Quantastica, Saab and Vexlum. The research partners are VTT, Aalto University and the University of Tampere.

“Quantum technology is a multidisciplinary and rapidly advancing field. The QuTI consortium provides an ideal starting point for strengthening the international competitiveness of Finnish technology and industry in this fast-growing field,” says QuTI project’s coordinator, Research Professor Mika Prunnila from VTT.

“Quantum technology has already taken the step from research laboratories to commercial applications. We look forward in supporting this development trend even further and being part of creating a globally competitive industrial ecosystem in Finland around this technology,” says Dr. Jani Kivioja, CTO of Picosun Group.

“Atomic Layer Deposition, or ALD, is the advanced thin film coating method for ultra-thin, highly uniform and conformal material layers that enables the digital solutions of today. It will also play a crucial role in future innovations and in the quantum computing, communication and sensing devices that will be developed in the QuTI project”, continues Jussi Rautee, CEO of Picosun Group.

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

About Picosun
Picosun provides the most advanced 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, Japan, South Korea, China mainland and Taiwan, offices in India and France, and a world-wide sales and support network. Visit www.picosun.com.

• Read more about Picosun part of extensive quantum technology development project

YES (Yield Engineering Systems, Inc.), a leading manufacturer of process equipment for semiconductor advanced packaging, life sciences and “More-than-Moore” applications, today announced that Victor Huang has joined the company as its first Vice President of Legal Affairs.

Mr. Huang has served as both General Counsel for startups and Intellectual Property Counsel for some of the world’s leading technology firms, including eBay and Illumina, and has built and strategically managed patent portfolios in a variety of markets. While working to safeguard and expand YES’s intellectual property assets, he will also build the legal function and advise the company on licensing and joint development agreements, M&A activity, and a diverse range of corporate legal tasks and concerns including employment and compliance.

“Victor’s extensive experience in the strategic management of worldwide IP portfolios will be a great resource for YES as we continue our international expansion. We feel that his engineering background, coupled with his history of building scalable processes for business and legal operations in a fast-growing environment, make him an especially good fit for our team,” said Rezwan Lateef, President of YES.

Mr. Huang holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Davis, and received his JD from the University of San Francisco School of Law. He has a particular interest in issues relating to open source programs, including compliance, product security, and community relations.

About YES
YES (Yield Engineering Systems, Inc.) is a preferred provider of high-tech, cost-effective equipment for transforming surfaces, materials, and interfaces. The company’s product lines include thermal processing systems, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) systems, plasma etching tools, and wet process equipment used for the precise surface modification of semiconductor substrates, semiconductor and MEMS devices, and biodevices. With YES, customers ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies can create and volume-produce products in a wide range of markets, including Advanced Packaging, MEMS, Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality and Life Sciences. YES is headquartered in Fremont, California, with a growing global presence. For more information, please visit www.yieldengineering.com.

• Read more about Victor Huang Joins Yield Engineering Systems (YES) as VP of Legal Affairs

Wooptix SL, a Spanish company dedicated to developing advanced imaging solutions for the semiconductor industry, will be presenting a new technique for Patterned Wafer Geometry at the upcoming SPIE Advanced Lithography conference on February 28th, 2022, in a paper published together with Applied Materials. The flatness of the silicon wafer used to manufacture integrated circuits is controlled to tight tolerances to ensure the full wafer is sufficiently flat for lithographic processing. In recent years, a metrology tool based on double Fizeau interferometry has been used to generate wafer geometry maps to correct for process induced focus issues and overlay problems. In the upcoming paper, WFPI is used successfully on patterned silicon wafers to acquire 7.65 million data points in 5 seconds on the full 300mm patterned wafer with a lateral resolution of 96µm to generate the wafer shape.

About Wooptix
Based in La Laguna Tenerife, Canary Islands, Wooptix is founded on decades of optical research done at the astrophysics department at La Laguna University in conjunction with Teide Observatory in Tenerife, one of the world’s most important astronomy research centers. Wooptix, being a venture funded company and an Intel Capital portfolio company, has used the venture funds to develop Phemet and bring it to commercialization for semiconductor the lab market and is currently in the early stages of bringing the technique in to a fully automated fab tool.

• Read more about Wooptix introduces a patterned wafer geometry system for 300mm silicon wafers

YES (Yield Engineering Systems, Inc. ), a leading manufacturer of process equipment for semiconductor advanced packaging, life sciences and “More-than-Moore” applications, today announced that it has acquired SPEC (Semiconductor Process Equipment Corporation) of Valencia, California for an undisclosed amount. The companies had announced a strategic partnership agreement in June.

The purchase brings together two longtime, trusted semiconductor equipment suppliers with more than 70 years of industry experience between them. “YES and SPEC have many characteristics in common,” said Rama Alapati, CEO of YES. “Both of us have accumulated decades of technological expertise and have installed hundreds of systems in dozens of countries. We both take pride in our many repeat customers, and our excellent industry reputations. In acquiring SPEC, we feel YES is now better-positioned to meet the growing demands of current and future customers in emerging markets such as HPC, AI/ML, 5G, autonomous driving, augmented reality, and other computationally intensive applications.”

“The SPEC product line, which includes cleaning, etching, stripping and plating equipment, complements our portfolio well, and will allow YES to extend our offerings into the wet processing market,” added Rezwan Lateef, President of YES. “We welcome SPEC’s employees to the YES team, and we look forward to developing a variety of new products together to address and anticipate customer needs.”

“SPEC is very pleased to join forces with YES. With global demand for semiconductors increasing dramatically, this merger could not have come at a better time for both companies. We are excited to help YES open new markets and opportunities for our proven wet-process technologies going forward,” said Kevin McGillivray, co-founder of SPEC.

In addition to augmenting its personnel resources with the SPEC staff, YES will gain more than 40,000 square feet of manufacturing, assembly, and cleanroom space in Valencia, as well as SPEC’s regional offices around the world.

About YES
YES (Yield Engineering Systems, Inc.) is a preferred provider of high-tech, cost-effective equipment for transforming surfaces, materials, and interfaces. The company’s product lines include vacuum cure systems, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) systems, and plasma etching tools used for precise surface modification and thin-film coating of semiconductor wafers, semiconductor and MEMS devices, biosensors and medical substrates. With YES, customers ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies can create and volume-produce products in a wide range of markets, including Advanced Packaging, MEMS, Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality and Life Sciences. YES is headquartered in Fremont, California, with a growing presence globally. For more information, please visit http://www.yieldengineering.com.

About SPEC
SPEC (Semiconductor Process Equipment Corporation) is a highly experienced supplier of surface conditioning wet process equipment. Since 1986, SPEC has designed and manufactured wafer-level and device-level wet process equipment for acid and solvent surface modification (cleaning, etching, stripping), electroplating, and electroless (chemical) plating for all industries requiring a high level of process cleanliness. SPEC’s products are used for polysilicon chip, chunk, and ingot cleaning; crucible cleaning, cavity cleaning for particle accelerators, chemical mixing and delivery, hard drive component cleaning, and quartzware cleaning. SPEC systems are engineered to match the unique requirements of the end user. For more information, please visit http://www.team-spec.com.

• Read more about YES (Yield Engineering Systems, Inc.) Acquires SPEC (Semiconductor Process Equipment Corp.)