Axus Technology’s CEO, Dan Trojan, met with Dr. Knut Gottfried from Fraunhofer and ErzM Technologies, a well-known expert for CMP across Europe, to discuss their experience with Axus Technology as valued clients and partners for over 16 years. Dr. Knut has been working with Fraunhofer for almost 25 years, and has been in the CMP space for almost 20 years. In Fraunhofer, he runs a research group dedicated to any kind of surface treatment, mainly CMP and wet processing. They help customers with process services, wafer services, and CMP process development or adoption of existing processes to fit the needs of their customers and their products.
In the early 2000’s, Dr. Knut and his team began looking for a CMP tool that was more flexible than a standard production tool. They found that with standard production tools, they couldn’t achieve consistent processing performance, and for R&D, they needed flexibility to run different materials, and different wafer sizes that they could not achieve with a standard solution. In 2008, they stumbled upon Axus Technology, and found a CMP tool with the flexibility and agility they needed.
“The tool was an enabler for us to step into hybrid bonding technology, specifically CMP for hybrid bonding” Dr Knut Gottfried mentions.
What stood out to them was Axus Technology’s ability to run all wafer sizes below 300 millimeters, and their ability to process a wide range of materials encompassing a wide range of compound semiconductors. They felt that Axus provided a tool that was flexible enough to easily switch between materials, technologies, wafer sizes, thicknesses, designed for high-volume manufacturing, reduced cost of ownership, and was uniquely built to handle processing for compound semiconductors like SiC and GaN, something the leading manufacturers had yet to tackle.
“When processing SiC, it is essential that you have a tool that can flip a wafer and polish the wafer from both sides, and that can also accommodate high-volume which is what the Capstone tool does” Dr. Knut Gotfried states.
In 2008, Dr. Knut and his team visited Axus Technology’s lab for the factory acceptance of the tool. While at Axus, they found that the engineers gave a deep dive into the operation of the tool, the processes, and really collaborated with them. What they also appreciated was Axus Technology’s process development team had very in depth CMP expertise. They found they could develop a CMP process with Axus that they could then easily transfer to a production tool.
Finally, what solidified Dr. Knut’s choice to partner with Axus Technology was the team, their expertise, and the eagerness and desire to collaborate. Dr. Knut notes how, “With Axus Technology, they found a partnership rather than just a customer relationship.”
