Unisers, a Swiss-based semiconductor toolmaker, announced on Thursday that it had raised $14 million in a funding round headed by Intel Capital to construct demonstrator machines for innovative technologies that would be tested by significant chip fabrication clients.
According to Ali Altun, CEO and founder of Unisers, which was founded in 2019, the devices will provide a new degree of performance in the challenging work of detecting extraneous extremely minute particles that destroy chips in manufacture.
A malfunctioning chip can be caused by a little particle that falls onto a silicon wafer, which is the raw material used to make chips. However, this issue might go unnoticed for months, after hundreds of steps have been completed in the production process.
Thus, it is more cost-effective to identify particles shortly after they infect wafers.
Particles of ever-smaller dimensions pose an issue when chips operate quicker and their circuitry becomes smaller.
“We are the only company which can detect these extremely small, small, smaller than 10 nanometer particles on wafer,” Altun stated to reporters.
The new machines’ technology is the first thing that Unisers has produced. According to Altun, the method coated wafers with a unique material that improved the way particles glowed in the light as it rebounded off them.
Although Intel Capital has made investments to support the technology’s commercialization, Jennifer Ard, managing director, stated that the semiconductor industry must do more to prevent contamination in its raw materials and fabs.
“Some of the ways that we’re measuring things within the fab, it’s coming to the point where we can’t use typical optical methods and others,” she stated.
Unisers’ technique is also intended to identify material impurities, which can also be a source of flaws.