Tegal Corporation (Nasdaq:TGAL),
a leading designer and manufacturer of plasma etch and deposition systems used
in the production of MEMS, power semiconductor, and optoelectronic devices,
announced today that the Company received an order for an Endeavor AT PVD cluster
tool from a leading manufacturer of MEMS imaging sensors. The Endeavor AT PVD
system will ship in the first quarter of CY2009, and will be used by Tegal's
customer to meet the critical manufacturing needs of a much-expanded recent
business demand for the customer's imaging sensors.
“Throughout the entire set of equipment evaluation and process demonstration
activities conducted by our customer, the Endeavor AT PVD system repeatedly
returned superior film stress control results, and squarely hit the other target
film properties required by our customer for their MEMS image sensor,”
said Paul Werbaneth, Vice President – Marketing, Tegal Corporation. “Our
customer is completely satisfied the Endeavor is ready to go from final process
optimization directly into High Volume Manufacturing, and our customer is confident
about HVM success, knowing they will have full process and hardware backing
from Tegal's award-winning team of customer support engineers.”
The Tegal Endeavor AT system is a state-of the-art, ultra-high vacuum PVD cluster
tool used in production fabs to deposit consistent, high purity films, with
low to zero stress values, in an extremely clean process environment. Low stress
films are widely utilized in backside metallization for power and discrete devices,
under-bump metallization applications, advanced packaging, high-brightness light
emitting diodes (HB-LEDs), and in creating electro-acoustic devices for FBARs
and RF MEMS. The Endeavor AT has an easy-to-use GUI, SECS/GEM communication,
reliable low-contact wafer handling, and flexible wafer shape and size capability,
that makes it ideal for ultra-clean production environments for both front-side
and back-side applications. Optional damage-free soft-etch modules, and a variety
of DC, AC, and RF magnetron configurations, are available to sputter the many
different dielectric and conductive films used in semiconductor, MEMS, and other
electronic device production.
According to Frost & Sullivan, a prominent market research and analysis
firm, the image sensor market will continue to demonstrate healthy growth in
the near-term, as image sensors see increasingly ubiquitous deployment in consumer
electronic, cell phone handset, medical imaging, and automotive applications.
Frost & Sullivan also say that innovations in image sensor technology will
expand the image sensor market beyond the conventional set of applications now
in use, to include situations where very low light levels, or extended optical
wavelength ranges, provide new opportunities for electronic imaging. Another
firm following these topics, Strategies Unlimited, points out the automotive
market alone represents opportunities for employing between five and twenty
image sensors per automobile, for functions such as blind-spot viewing, lane-departure
warnings, headlight dimming, “black-box” event recorders, and driver
alertness monitoring. These automotive imaging sensors will join the large number
of MEMS devices already found in today's automobiles.