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Ready to roll: Center for Advanced Microelectronics Manufacturing opens in New York (revised/updated |
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Apr 01, 2008 at 05:06 PM |
Although I had to decline the invitation to attend Monday's official inauguration ceremony at the Center for Advanced Microelectronics Manufacturing, it's not for lack of interest.
It's just a bit far to travel on short notice: I'm in Los Angeles, and the center is in Endicott, NY, down the road from project manager Binghamton University. CAMM has been on my radar for a few years, ever since I first heard about the initiative, which features a flexible plastic electronics roll-to-roll pilot manufacturing line. After waiting on the last of the equipment to be delivered, installed, and qualified over the past year or so, the 10,000 square foot, cleanroom R&D facility is finally ready to, er, roll.
Binghamton, Cornell University, and Endicott Interconnect Technologies (where the line is housed) collaborate on the project, which is part of Binghamton's New York State Center of Excellence in Small Scale Systems Integration and Packaging. A big boost to the effort came in a virtual suitcase full of money ($12 million or so) from the US Display Consortium, designated for the development and purchase of tools.
The prototype line's unique equipment set, with all systems customized to varying degrees, includes an Azores 6600 FlexPrinter lithography stepper, the first such unit with a built-in R2R handling system, which has already demonstrated two-micron lines and spaces patterning; a Tamarack projection scanner; a Frontier wet coat/bake system; an Hollmuller-Siegmund wet stripper/developer with Northfield Automation web handling; a KDF batch sputterer; a General Vacuum sputter tool for depositing ITO, aluminum, and other films, which has PECVD capability and can handle material rolls up to 24-inches wide and hundreds of feet long; the first in-line defect inspection tool for flexible web substrates (with one-micron detection capability for particles and scratches), jointly developed by Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) and Integral Vision with some of that USDC funding; and a CHA Industries high-vacuum coater (which was evidently quite delayed in its delivery). Although not part of the CAMM line, Fujifilm Dimatix and Microfab lab-scale inkjet printers, which can be used to deposit functional inks for printed electronics applications, are installed elsewhere on campus.
Not unlike other university-based fabrication facilities, CAMM is open to both private industry and academic researchers, through a combo of membership dues and funded programs. The lion's share of the efforts will consist of large-scale manufacturability testing as well as equipment and materials evaluations that will contribute to the development of a fully integrated R2R prototype line. In addition to Endicott, the corporate membership, uh, rolls include some heavy hitters, such as Kodak, GE, Samsung, Corning, and TI, as well as governmental entities like NASA and the Army Research Lab. The center is also involved with efforts at the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State (which also receives a decent chunk of US Army funding).
Despite all the excitement around the center coming online, once the glow wears off, it's back to a daunting list of challenges. One of CAMM's main marching orders deals with how to perform R2R lithography while maintaining mechanical, thermal, and dimensional stability of a flexible plastic substrate under varying temperature, tension, and humidity, as R2R processing guru Vincent Cannella of ECD (and codeveloper of the in-line inspection system) outlined for me a few months back.
"A plastic substrate is a sponge. You change the local RH, and its dimensions change. Depending on the level of repeatability that you need for your lithography, layer to layer, that presents a substantial issue. Not because you can't hold the RH [relative humidity] and temperature stable or keep your cleanroom stable, but you have to go through a lithography step, then you go through wet processes, coat with photoresist, develop resist, etch materials, then you strip, and all these things. So you go through steps that change the dimension of the plastic, and then you have to try and get it back to the original shape."
"Local variations in plastic will cause distortions," he continued. "The dimensional stability of the plastic is such that it's not scaleable linearly, it varies from one side to another, the modulus is not high enough, it's not stiff enough.... While the whole R2R lithography process is not impossible, it's not fun. It's messy. Anything with R2R wet process acids are not easy, but they are doable."
Gail Glover, director of media relations at Binghamton, said in an email to me that "the festivities went off really well" Monday morning. She also shared some Jonathan Cohen-snapped photos (shown below) of CAMM's inaugural activities.
Binghamton University President Lois B. DeFleur and
Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) unveil a new
sign that will be displayed in the CAMM facility.
Hinchey, DeFleur, center director Bahgat Sammakia (right),
and others check out the General Vacuum sputtering
tool in CAMM's Class 10,000 cleanroom.
Grad student Hao Zhang likes what he sees
in a flexible substrate hot off the line.
Zhang and fellow grad student Dennise
Yepez make sure that the ECD/IV
in-line defect inspection system (right)
is ready to roll.
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