Owens Design Inc. (Fremont, CA) announced that it has introduced a wafer heating and cooling module to its family of custom wafer-handling solutions. The heating and cooling module is designed for 200 mm/300 mm wafers and is BOLTS-compatible for simple integration with standard wafer-handling automation.
The cost-effective module uses resistive heating elements to achieve better than 450 °C heating in less than 15 seconds. After processing, the module rapidly cools the wafer to allow safe return to the FOUP. Backside particle and metals contamination is minimized through a low-contact wafer chuck. Test data demonstrates that the system provides temperature uniformity and low metals and backside contamination.
Owens Design President John Apgar stated, "Our customer challenged us to come up with a cost-effective design while solving demanding thermal and cleanliness requirements. Our history of solving problems in custom wafer-handling allowed us to come up with a novel solution. Packaging the system and its supporting electronics in a BOLTS-compatible footprint makes integration to a standard EFEM simple and reduces our customer’s development cost."
