Hine Automation Continues to Challenge Itself to Bring Flexibility and Customization to Each Unique System

Hine Automation Continues to Challenge Itself to Bring Flexibility and Customization to Each Unique System

With decades of experience designing and manufacturing automation systems and robotic components, one thing never changes—change itself. At Hine, we pride ourselves on our deep level of industry knowledge and our ability to innovate and adjust to our industry’s changes to better position ourselves to meet our customers’ needs.

Reliability and cost-effectiveness are the top two considerations our customers mention when deciding to work with us. However, we also understand how important it is that we are dependable and flexible at the same time. With our forward-thinking mindset and ability to quickly adapt to innovations in the semiconductor industry, we have consistently delivered quality solutions to customers for years.

An Opportunity Presented by Denton Vacuum

To address varying wafer sizes, Denton Vacuum, a leading provider of thin film deposition technologies, partnered with us. Denton’s goal was to increase efficiencies and minimize downtime to deliver faster development times to their customers.

Silicon semiconductor processing is well established, and wafers have been produced at a standard size for years. However, III-V semiconductors are typically deposited on less readily available substrates such as indium phosphide or sapphire. Larger sapphire wafers (4″ and 6″) took a while to become available and cost-competitive with smaller wafers (2″ and 3″). For this reason, it is common to use different wafer sizes for different products. Older products tend to qualify on smaller wafer sizes, and it is not cost-effective to requalify them on larger substrates. In addition, it is not economically viable to have separate production lines for each wafer size. Therefore, wafers of different sizes go through the same system, and when using mixed wafer sizes, a considerable amount of downtime often occurs while the system is reconfigured for different wafer sizes.

Hine Automation’s Solution

To address Denton Vacuum’s challenges and improve uptime, Hine’s automation enabled the process to run together through one system without any hardware changes, as if the wafers were all the same size. Hine’s wafer transfer functionality using a Load Lock with batch processing of a Cassette Load Port system transfers wafers into and out of the process chamber under vacuum conditions. By not breaking vacuum and managing tooling changes to accommodate different wafer sizes, Denton can increase productivity and meet the needs of their customers’ tight manufacturing schedules. Utilizing Hine’s automation, Denton Vacuum streamlined production and increased the time to focus on their thin film process, where they add the most value for their customers.

Hine works with companies from all over the globe to provide flexible and cost-effective solutions. We are committed to supporting our customers in the semiconductor industry with automation and robotic components so you can focus on what you do best.

For more information on Hine Automation and our ability to integrate with OEM products, call us at (813)749-7519 or click here to contact us online.