Jun 10 2009
Nanometrics Incorporated (Nasdaq:NANO), a leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of high-performance process control metrology systems used primarily in the manufacturing of semiconductors, solar photovoltaics and high-brightness LEDs, as well as by customers in the silicon wafer and data storage industries, today announced a follow-on order for an Atlas® metrology system equipped with NanoCD™ capability. The system was qualified for production in the second quarter of this year to a leading hard drive manufacturer as part of its plan for Nanometrics’ technology to support both film thickness and optical critical dimension (OCD) metrology in the production of advanced magnetic heads.
“With the added capability of our NanoCD, we have seen our customers expand Atlas system capabilities to increase process monitoring and use cases with additional metrology steps previously not possible with legacy technologies,” commented Nagesh Avadhany, Vice President of Applications at Nanometrics. “Our customers are specifically deploying our Atlas systems to monitor critical process profile parameters, many of which can only be observed non-destructively by OCD technology. Our OCD technology is increasingly being deployed to replace more costly, slower and destructive cross-section SEM techniques.”
Nanometrics has deployed OCD solutions in every segment of the fab including lithography, etch, chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) and thin film deposition, and across all device types including logic, DRAM, flash memory, and magnetic heads.