Thursday, January 25, 2024
Chipmetrics Secures € 2.4 Million Seed Funding Round to Accelerate Product Innovation and Global Expansion.
Saturday, December 17, 2022
Kokusai Electric relies on patterned 3D substrates in thin film process metrology from Chipmetrics
Friday, September 16, 2022
The fast-growing technology start-up Chipmetrics moved to Photonics Center
“The handling and development of our products must all be done in cleanrooms, as is typical in the semiconductor industry. That is why they are a necessity for a company like us.”
“ALD is used, for example, in semiconductor components, batteries and optical filters with 3D structures that are difficult to implement and coat. A smooth uniform thin film coating is very difficult, but it is even more difficult to measure whether the coating is really uniform smooth.”
“The investments made by giant electronics companies are often in billions. A manufacturer of semiconductor equipment, which is best able to demonstrate its technical performance, can win a significantly sizeable deal in a big chip manufacturer’s factory investment. It is often important for our customer companies to be able to demonstrate to their own customers how well they can achieve a functioning process,” Utriainen explains.
“ALD technology is complex, and it has been one of the key challenges for investors: sponsors naturally want to understand what they are participating in. We have now got investors involved in Finland, which also increases interest abroad.”
Monday, September 5, 2022
Chipmetrics announces completion of the seed investment round
Sunday, July 17, 2022
Chipmetrics High Aspect Ratio Test Chip launched at ALD2022 in Ghent
At the recent AVS ALD2022 Conference in Ghent, Belgium, I made several rounds in the ALD industrial exhibition and met up with Chipmetrics Oy from Finland. Chipmetrics produce test structures, chips, and wafer concepts for advanced materials and microelectronics manufacturing, many specifically for ALD. Their main product – PillarHall test chip – is developed for advanced thin film process conformality characterization to accelerate applications of conformal 3D thin films. The Pillar Hall test chip has a lateral, very high aspect ratio structure to determine conformality when developing new ALD hardware, processes, and precursors.
Chipmetrics at AVS ALD2022 in Ghent, Belgium (Lower photo: Zahra Ghaderi, Mikko Utriainen and James Song)
What caught my eye this time was their new vertical high aspect ratio test chip - VHAR1 silicon test chip which consists of an array of vertical high aspect ratio holes. The holes have a constant hole diameter of 1 μm, and a depth of 200 μm over the whole chip area 15 × 15 mm. The deposited film penetration depth profile can be measured by cross-sectioning as normally done with the vertical high aspect ratio test structures.
This structure resembles the situation in semiconductor devices such as DRAM, 3DNAND, and TSVs. It can undoubtedly get valuable information and understanding when developing ALD processes for large surface areas with high aspect ratios. Anyone that has developed new ALD processes knows that not only the aspect ratio plays a role but also the total surface area since you need to achieve a sufficient dose of the precursors at the right process conditions to achieve perfect conformality very fast to be productive and minimize precursor decomposition, "CVD effects" and have effective purging of precursors and ALD process byproducts.
For more information, please find contact information here to Chipmetrics: LINK
Links
PillarHall – introduction in SlideShare
PillarHall – introduction in YouTube
PillarHall – short introduction in YouTube
Video: How to use PillarHall test chip
PillarHall Web Site
About Chipmetrics:
Chipmetrics is a forerunner in productizing test structures, test chips, and wafer concepts for advanced materials and microelectronics manufacturing.We are experts in thin film conformality characterization. Our main product – PillarHall test chip – is developed for advanced thin film process conformality characterization to accelerate applications of conformal 3D thin films.
Chipmetrics Oy is a part of the emerging Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) industry and research community. Our headquarters are in Finland – in the country of the origin of ALD.