FAQs

Founded in 1989 by Randy Crockett, Trion Technology is a privately held company that manufactures leading edge processing equipment in the United States of America.

We delivered our first system to Sematech in 1990, and have an installed base of over 550 systems. Our customers range from a small university department, a start up with limited funding, to large corporations running 24/7 production operations.

With such a diverse customer base, and a 25 year process library, we are uniquely positioned to provide a true “Lab to Fab” philosophy, and is backed by our on-going commitment to excellence through “The Power of Simplicity”.

Trion’s markets include:

• Photoresist Strip
• Communication Industry
• HBLED
• MEMS
• Power Devices
• GaN & SiC
• Photovoltaic’s
• HIT & 3rd Generation devices
• Failure Analysis, and Yield Enhancement
• Universities, and R&D Labs

Trion has been designing simple and reliable systems that have a small footprint for over 25 years. We have a fully equipped Process Laboratory to run samples and provide process support. Trion has its own on-site machine shop, which allows rapid prototyping for custom designs.

Trion manufactures plasma etch and deposition tools that adhere with the following:

• UL Rated
• CE certified, and marked
• SEMI S2, S8 compliant
• NFPA 79

National Fire Protection Association standard provides safeguards for industrial machinery to protect operators, equipment, facilities and work-in-progress from fire and electrical hazards

• SMEMA Electrical Equipment Interface Standard

Surface Mount Equipment Manufacturers’ Association standard to facilitate the interface of equipment used in the manufacture of printed circuit boards.

The Minilock is a vacuum load lock. It is a separate chamber to load the samples. It has a slit valve to the reaction chamber that allows the reactor chamber to stay under vacuum. There is a robotic arm that has a direct drive pick-and-place mechanism that provides high reliability, and accurate loading. The load lock includes its own pressure gauge. The Minilock is typically used when processes use corrosive gases or you need to control the process environment.

An automatch is RF matching network with variable capacitors. Reflected power is monitored by a Phase-Mag detector, and the control circuitry automatically adjust the capacitors to ensure that reflected power less than 5% of set point.

There is a closed loop controller that monitors the process pressure, and adjusts a butterfly valve to raise or lower the pressure to a pressure set point.

Gases such as Chlorine (Cl2), Boron Trichloride (BCl3), and HBR should have the lines purged when in standby mode or when changing bottles. If a line is opened to the air before purging, acid will form and ruin the plumbing and mfc’s.

An electrostatic chuck is proven to be critical in maintaining cooler substrate temperatures during etching. A conductive substrate is held to the chuck using electrostatic forces, and helium is introduced to the backside of the wafer, providing significant cooling. The wafer clamping is monitored by a flow read back from the helium pressure controller. This electrostatic chuck has been manufactured by Trion Technology for over 15 years, and through careful design of the helium channels, a lip seal has been eliminated. The bipolar design uses two circuits to hold the wafer in place, and a special software algorithm ensures that a reverse charge releases the wafer at the end of processing without having to use a plasma burst.

Turbo pumps are typically used when the process pressures are below 30 mTorr or where a good base pressure is required.

Vacuum cassettes are typically used when there are multiple substrates running the same process. By loading a batch of substrates into a vacuum cassette elevator, throughput can be increased as there isn’t any delay for venting, and pumping between process runs. This is typically used in a production environment. Through our careful design, the Phantom RIE platform and the Orion PECVD platform can easily be configured with this capability.

A cluster tool is a system that has multiple process chambers connected together typically by a central square, hexagonal, or octagonal central chamber. Loading can be achieved with either a single load port, or vacuum cassette elevators. Uses are either: in research – where there’s a worry about breaking vacuum between layers; or in a production environment to increase throughput, and productivity. The Oracle platform has been tested in both applications, and has one of the smallest footprints in the industry.

A laser endpoint detector provides a real-time process control capability for a wide range of dry etch application by monitoring the reflectance of laser light from surface of sample. It calculates the etch rate and etch depth in real time enabling enhanced control of process termination, and is controlled by the Trion Technology software.

Using a spectrometer with CCD array detector, it is possible to monitor the intensity of light from a plasma, and with careful set-up, separate out different species as they can emit light at different wavelengths. Endpoint termination can then be controlled by the Trion Technology software.

Learn more about Trion’s processing techniques here >>

Learn more about typical features here >>