RF Plasma Power Delivery System from Advanced Energy
“No strings attached performance” in RF plasma power for semiconductor manufacturing? At Advanced Energy (AE), they like to say, “no cables attached performance.” That was just one of the five daunting challenges they solved when designing their unique genre-breaking RF plasma power delivery system:
No cables from RF generator-to-match and match-to-process chamber electrode
Ultra-fast RF tuning for very short process steps
Wide impedance operating range
A compact single package to fit in small spaces (enabling direct connection to chamber)
Less expensive than traditional RF generator + matching network + connectors + cables
Paramount® HFi™ from Advanced Energy
Advanced Energy pioneered the first commercially viable, fully integrated RF generator and solid-state matching network system in the year 2000 … and it’s been a massive success. Since then, they've
The failure of any key element or subsystem in a semiconductor manufacturing facility has the potential to bring the process to a complete standstill and/or to force costly wafer scrap. A key consequence of such failure is an associated increase in the cost of operations. While rarely reflected in the upfront Capital Expenditures (CapEx) pricing, from a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) perspective, manufacturers typically find that unplanned downtime, raw material wafer costs, unscheduled repairs and the purchase of spare units can be significant contributors to Operating Expenses (OpEx).
With today’s complex semiconductor manufacturing processes, operators are looking for ways to identify not only the potential points of failure but also ways to predict when a failure is most likely to occur. Armed with this information they can then proactively address problems before they lead to costly, productivity-impacting downtime.
