High-Performance Ceramics in 300mm Horizontal Wafer Processing Equipment

Among today’s wafer batch processing equipment, take centrotherm’s c.HORICOO300 as an example. This equipment is used by Renesas Electronics of Japan in its 300mm power semiconductor production line in Yamanashi Prefecture, mainly for oxidation and annealing processes. The system adopts an 8-tube cluster design and is equipped with a fully automatic wafer and wafer boat transfer system, which improves production capacity and yield and reduces the total cost of ownership by up to 50%. However, micro-particle contamination or uneven thermal field may lead to a decrease in the yield rate. Therefore, the requirements for components in φ200/300mm wafer processing equipment are very strict. Traditional metal materials are difficult to meet the requirements, and high-performance ceramic materials can perfectly solve this problem. Usually, ceramic materials (such as aluminum oxide and aluminum nitride) have the characteristics of high temperature resistance, high insulation, and low pollution, which can greatly improve the stability of the equipment.