Mar 16 2010
Crossing Automation, Inc., a leading supplier of efficient, cost-effective front-end and back-end automation solutions and engineering services to high volume semiconductor equipment manufacturers, today announced that it has improved its Spartan™ equipment front end module (EFEM) performance, enabling it to achieve 450 wafers per hour (wph) throughput.
Spartan™ EFEM
The improved design was undertaken to address the requirements of high throughput semiconductor manufacturing processes such as strip/ash, clean and ion implant. The improved Spartan EFEM enables 100 percent process tool utilization due to its patented wafer engine atmospheric robot which offers the fastest available wafer exchange time of less than 2.5 seconds.
"Maximizing tool throughput delivers a critical competitive advantage for tool suppliers while lowering tool cost of ownership for IC manufacturers," said May Su, vice president of product marketing for Crossing Automation. "This is especially important for tools that have the process capability to achieve hundreds of wafers per hour throughput, but were limited by the available atmospheric robotic technologies. By upgrading Spartan's production-proven software algorithms for wafer move paths, we are now able to deliver the highest throughput capability of any commercially available EFEM, while maintaining Spartan's established reliability and cleanliness performance."
The improved Spartan EFEM has been qualified by a leading strip equipment supplier and demonstrated a 20 percent increase in throughput over currently implemented EFEM technology. The production proven Spartan platform has an installed base of over 1,000 units and demonstrated 99 percent uptime.
Source: http://www.crossinginc.com/