Wooptix SL, a Spanish company dedicated to developing new imaging solutions, has introduced Phemet® lab system, a 300mm blank silicon wafer geometry system collecting millions of topography data points on a full wafer in a few seconds. Based in La Laguna Tenerife, Canary Islands, the company is founded on decades of optical research done at the astrophysics department at La Lagune University in conjunction with Teide Observatory in Tenerife, one of the world’s most important astronomy research centers. Series A funding in 2016 from venture firms including Intel Capital has allowed the company to develop Phemet and bring it to commercialization for semiconductor the lab market.
Phemet is based on a new technique for measuring the wave front phase that is not related to laser interferometry, currently the standard for measuring silicon wafer shape and thickness variations. Using Wooptix’ Wave Front Phase Imaging (WFPI), the single camera Phemet lab version collects 7.6 million data points on a 300mm wafer in just 5 seconds with sub 100µm lateral resolution and a noise level allowing for 0.3nm topography detection delivering high resolution shape and thickness variation maps. Upgrading to a dual camera setup, the same number of pixels and noise level can be acquired in just 0.1 seconds enabling high speed fab operations.
"We believe that Phemet will be an important tool to solve the depth-of-focus faced by the emerging EUV lithography technology by acquiring tens of millions of data points on the silicon wafer in less than a second”, explained Dr. José Manuel Rodríguez Ramos, CEO and founder of Wooptix. "Our team has worked hard to introduce a low cost 300mm Phemet lab system for potential fab introduction. We look forward to collaborate with equipment makers and wafer manufacturers to bring the tool from the lab and into the fab”.
About Wooptix SL
Wooptix is a small, venture funded startup based in Tenerife Spain with around 20 people spread between Tenerife, Madrid, and San Francisco. Counting Intel Capital, Bullnet VC and Caixa Bank among its leading investors, the company is currently working on its Series B equity round to bring the semiconductor wafer geometry system from the lab and into a fully automatic fab tool.