Inseto, technical distributor of equipment and materials, has supplied the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) with a SUSS MicroTec MA8Gen4Pro mask aligner for the lithography of semiconductor wafers.
The mask aligner has been invested in with the intention of being used by STFC’s Interconnect Group, which designs and manufactures advanced packaging solutions for semiconductor die, themselves required for scientific instruments. The MA8Gen4Pro will soon be used for the placement of millions of 20µ diameter bumps, on a 50µ pitch, onto a wafer containing more than 100 die. Each die set will measure at 196mm2 and to 65,000 bumps.
Secondly, the MA8Gen4Pro has become the latest piece of equipment STFC’s Innovations Technology Access Centre (I-TAC) that is available to start-ups, under a new service to incubate SMEs. I-TAC has nearly 100 companies and groups leasing their facilities for projects ranging from sensors for gas turbines, lab on chip and devices for head-up displays.
Matt Brown, director of Inseto, concludes: “We’re delighted that the SUSS MicroTek equipment is playing a role in the manufacture of the chips for the STFC’s particle physics experiments, and that I-TAC’s customers will have access to the latest generation aligner for their development and manufacturing purposes.”
