SUSS MicroTec is a supplier of equipment and process solutions for the semiconductor

Semiconductor

A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...

 industry and related markets.
The high precision microstructuring systems like photolithography

Photolithography

Photolithography is a process used in microfabrication to selectively remove parts of a thin film or the bulk of a substrate. It uses light to transfer a geometric pattern from a photomask to a light-sensitive chemical "photoresist", or simply "resist," on the substrate...

 tools are used for manufacturing of processors, memory chips, MEMS, LED

LEd

LEd is a TeX/LaTeX editing software working under Microsoft Windows. It is a freeware product....

 and other micro system devices.

SUSS MicroTec is headquartered in Garching near Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

, Germany.

History

In 1949, Karl Süss founded the company Karl Süss KG to support sales and service for optical devices made by Ernst-Leitz GmbH, later Leica, in Munich, Germany. Then in 1963 the assignment by Siemens to develop a simple photolithography tool marked a change in the strategic direction of the company towards contract manufacturing and engineering. With the creation of the MJB3, the first mask aligner now exhibited in the Deutsches Museum

Deutsches Museum

The Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of technology and science, with approximately 1.5 million visitors per year and about 28,000 exhibited objects from 50 fields of science and technology. The museum was founded on June 28, 1903, at a meeting of the Association...

 in Munich, the company entered the emerging semiconductor industry

Semiconductor industry

The semiconductor industry is the aggregate collection of companies engaged in the design and fabrication of semiconductor devices. It formed around 1960, once the fabrication of semiconductors became a viable business...

. In addition to manual and automatic alignment equipment the product portfolio extended to systems for related wafer processing

Wafer (electronics)

A wafer is a thin slice of semiconductor material, such as a silicon crystal, used in the fabrication of integrated circuits and other microdevices...

 steps such as development, cleaning and wafer bonding. The company expanded into the global market with the foundation of its first overseas subsidiaries in the 1980s.

In 1999 under the holding SÜSS MicroTec AG, the SUSS group went public on the German stock exchange

Deutsche Börse

Deutsche Börse AG is a marketplace organizer for the trading of shares and other securities. It also is a transaction services provider. It gives companies and investors access to global capital markets. It is a joint stock company and was founded in 1993. The headquarters are in Frankfurt,...

. In 2002 all subsidiaries were renamed SUSS MicroTec.

Organization

In 1980 a production site for wafer bonders was founded in Waterbury, Vermont

Waterbury, Vermont

Waterbury is a town in Washington County in central Vermont, in the United States. It is also the name of a village within that town. The population was 4,915 at the 2000 census.-Economy:-Industry:...

, US, and in 1989, a production site opened for test systems in Sacka near Dresden, Germany. The acquisition of the French company S.E.T. in 1993 complemented the product portfolio with spin coaters and device bonders, the latter product line was phased out in 2007.

With the acquisition of Image Technology in Palo Alto, California, US, high precision photomasks

Photomask

A photomask is an opaque plate with holes or transparencies that allow light to shine through in a defined pattern. They are commonly used in photolithography.-Overview:...

 were provided for the lithographic processes. In 2002 the foundation of SUSS MicroOptics in Neuchatel, Switzerland, brought forward wafer-level produced optical devices such as micro lenses.

With the sale of the test systems division and the purchase of HamaTech APE early in 2010, SUSS MicroTec not only expands its expertise in wet processes but further focuses its core competence on micro structuring of devices.

Today the company has sales offices in the semiconductor growth markets of Japan, Taiwan, China, Singapore und Korea.

Photomask Processing Equipment

Photomasks can be very expensive with up to several hundred thousands of US dollars. Thus cleaning photomasks is very important in the areas of lithography and mask manufacturing. Photomask processing equipment comprises post exposure bake, develop, strip and clean.

Mask Aligner (photolithographic alignment tool)

Mask aligners adjust a glass mask to a wafer with submicron precision. This is vital for the exposure process with which the microscopic picture on the glass mask is then transferred to the wafer. The SUSS MicroTec mask aligner also covers other process steps for wafer processing such as development of the resists and cleaning of the photo mask.

Coater

Coaters distribute photo sensitive resists onto the wafer. For this process various technologies and equipment can be used: spin coater using centrifugal forces or spray coater that allow for an even distribution of the resist also on three dimensional structures.

Wafer Bonder (bond equipment)

Wafer Bonders join two or more aligned substrates to create an integrated circuit. The substrates can be joined, or bonded, using the following techniques: fusion bonding, anodic bonding, eutectic bonding, solder bonding, glass frit bonding, adhesive bonding. Temporary wafer bonding is performed on thinned wafers that are placed on a carrier for support. It gets its name because the adhesive used for bonding is removed. This process is used mainly to manufacture 3D Integrated Circuits. SUSS MicroTec produces equipment that supports all of these bonding techniques.

Microlens Arrays (micro-optical devices)

The microlens

Microlens

A microlens is a small lens, generally with a diameter less than a millimetre and often as small as 10 micrometres . The small sizes of the lenses means that a simple design can give good optical quality but sometimes unwanted effects arise due to optical diffraction at the small features...

 arrays manufactured by SUSS MicroTec's subsidiary SUSS MicroOptics are produced on wafer-level and are used for a large variety of applications such as illumination systems for semiconductor industry, telecommunication, metrology, imaging and laser industry.

Alliances

SUSS MicroTec announced in 2009 a range of strategic partnerships with industry partners as well as leading research institutes such as IMEC

Imec

Imec is a micro- and nanoelectronics research center headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, with offices in Belgium, the Netherlands, Taiwan, USA, China and Japan. Its staff of about 1,900 people includes more than 500 industrial residents and guest researchers...

 and ITRI

Itri

Itri is a small city and comune in the central Italian region of Latium and the Province of Latina.Itri is an agricultural centre divided in two parts by a small river, the Pontone. It lies in a valley between the Monti Aurunci and the sea, not far from the Gulf of Gaeta...

in the field of 3D integration.

SUSS MicroTec partnered with Philips Research for developing nanoimprint lithography processes.