Advanced Energy Industries Inc. launched the new Centra Smart Hub at SEMICON West in San Francisco.
The Centra Smart Hub, combined with Advanced Energy’s new Remote Smart Sensors (RSS), enables more accurate wafer-temperature measurement and real-time temperature control for many lamp-heated Si and SiC thermal processes, such as rapid thermal annealing (RTA) and Epitaxial (Epi) growth.
The result is a comprehensive, customizable solution that delivers industry-leading performance, with up to a 40% improvement in accuracy over other standard solutions when measuring at either 3.3 um or 5.2 um and at temperatures up to 1700°C. This is a critical leap for new and emerging semiconductor manufacturing processes, leading to increased throughput, process uniformity, and product quality. The Centra Smart Hub includes embedded ECAT and Ethernet protocols to integrate into today’s leading system architectures for faster time-to-market and new applications.
Many of these processes rely on infrared (IR) lamp heating, which can challenge traditional pyrometers, many of which operate in the short- and near-IR measurement wavelengths. The strong thermal signal from IR lamps can “flood” or saturate traditional near-IR pyrometers, making them unsuitable for wafer measurement. For this reason, measuring at a different wavelength can avoid the strong IR signal produced by the lamps and reduce its effect on the detected temperature.
Centra’s hub-and-spoke architecture has been optimized for semiconductor chambers. The Centra Smart Hub is placed in an instrument rack and connected to the RSS. The RSS is installed directly on the chamber and provides multiple measurement points across the wafer in ambient temperatures of up to 60°C.
For more information, visit advancedenergy.com.
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