Invited Paper VT-MoA6
How to Create as Less as Possible to Make the Best as Possible
Monday, November 10, 2014, 3:40 pm, Room 303
The field of vacuum technology is rapidly becoming a full blown industry, with parts and component suppliers, OEM manufacturers and end users (IDM). The generation of vacuum is not the goal, but the means to realize products and devices. Especially the semiconductor industry is one of the driving forces in this development, but also large scientific projects like ITER, Cern and others require a supply chain that can deliver parts that meet the requirements and certification. The upcoming introduction of EUV lithography required a change in the supply chain for manufacturers like ASML with suppliers that had to deliver vacuum qualified assemblies without any knowledge of vacuum technology.
The introduction of EUV also meant very complex vacuum systems that could not be baked anymore but with cleanliness demands that superseded the cleanliness that can be achieved with baked UHV systems. This was achieved by a rigorous cleaning and qualification process, standardized outgassing measurements and budgeting of all the parts and assemblies. To make a distinction between ordinary type of vacuum system building and this new way of making vacuum systems the phrase Ultra Clean Vacuum (UCV) was introduced. This presentation will describe how we solved a number of problems that occurred during this type of manufacturing, this includes supply chain engineering, cleaning procedures and solutions in the tool itself. This way of creating vacuum systems is now also being used by other OEM’s like AMAT, KLA-Tencor who are building highly complicated metrology tools and processing equipment, while vacuum generation is not their core business.