Safe space for wafers

In the semiconductor industry, Exyte is famous for its cleanrooms and controlled environments. But sometimes clean is not enough. Sometimes clients require a room that can't even be penetrated by electromagnetic radiation. This is where the experts at Exyte Technology get to work. The result of their creativity and efforts help to shrink the technology nodes of semiconductors down to less than five nanometers. This will make electronic devices even more powerful and compact.

The white box standing in the production hall in Renningen, a town just outside Stuttgart, could be anything. An oversized refrigerator? The module of a space station? An ancient computer? Not exactly.

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Semiconductors are manufactured in multiple layers that are coated, exposed, and etched several times. The foundation is a wafer: a round, flat disc made of silicon. Since semiconductors are extremely sensitive and have become so small that they are measured in nanometers (a nanometer is the millionth part of a millimeter, a human hair is between 50,000 and 100,000 nanometers thick), the wafer must be flawless. “Even a speck of dust can disrupt entire production processes,\" explains Fabian Ankele, Technical Product Manager for Exyte Technology.

Gloved hand holding a semiconductor wafer, used in microchip and electronic component manufacturing, with precise lines visible on its reflective surface.

Thanks to this “electromagnetic interference shielding chamber” for scanning electron microscope applications (yes, that's a long name, let’s just call it a chamber from now on), an Exyte client can now produce perfect semiconductors that are even smaller, faster, and more efficient. Exyte developed the chamber together with the client, from vision to perfect solution.

Semiconductors are manufactured in multiple layers that are coated, exposed, and etched several times. The foundation is a wafer: a round, flat disc made of silicon. Since semiconductors are extremely sensitive and have become so small that they are measured in nanometers (a nanometer is the millionth part of a millimeter, a human hair is between 50,000 and 100,000 nanometers thick), the wafer must be flawless. “Even a speck of dust can disrupt entire production processes," explains Fabian Ankele, Technical Product Manager for Exyte Technology.

Fabian Ankele smiling in a high-tech industrial setting, wearing glasses, a patterned shirt, and sporting a long red beard, standing between two metal frames.

The clean room within the clean room

And how do you detect such small contaminations or production defects? With a microscope. However, in the nano range, magnifying glasses are no longer helpful. You need an electron microscope. An electron microscope uses a beam of electrons to scan a surface and detect any irregularities. But like wafers, an electron microscope is extremely sensitive. It needs a controlled environment in which its rays are not deflected or interrupted by anything. And Exyte's chamber provides exactly that. Nothing gets in that should not be there. Not even acoustic signals or magnetic fields. The chamber is, so to speak, the cleanroom within the cleanroom. It could hardly be cleaner.

“It's more or less the only chamber of its kind on the market so far."

There is an additional vacuum chamber inside the shielding chamber. This is maintained even when the wafers are inserted by robots. "That was perhaps the biggest challenge. How do we maintain the vacuum and keep the electromagnetic radiation out when something enters the chamber?" asks Steffen Kühnle, Mechanical Designer at Exyte Technology. For this purpose, the engineers in Renningen developed special interfaces that are connected to the chamber. "It's more or less the only chamber of its kind on the market so far."

A gloved hand cleans a surface under UV light, revealing contamination, a process used to maintain cleanliness in controlled environments such as pharmaceuticals and electronics.

Capable of serial production

Another advantage of Exyte’s chamber over other scanning electron microscope systems is that it saves a lot of space. "Our chamber really only requires the space that the electron microscope needs. That saves the client space and therefore money,” says Ankele. Taking advantage of this leading edge, Exyte commenced serial production of the chamber.