Ion implanters cut IGBT manufacturing process

Article By : ULVAC

The SOPHI-30 and SOPHI-400 are aimed to reduce process time, improving IGBT manufacturing procedures.

ULVAC Inc. has announced the low-acceleration ion implanter SOPHI-30 and the high-acceleration ion implanter SOPHI-400.

The SOPHI-30 performs low-acceleration and high-concentration ion implantation. It achieves high productivity by reducing the process time to 1/60 when compared to previous ULVAC models.

When IGBT and diode are integrated into a single chip, reverse-conducting IGBT (RC-IGBT) requires the low acceleration and high concentration process to the reverse P-shape part in the collector on the backside of the thin wafer to N-shape.

Conventional ion implanters using low acceleration and high concentration process require a long process, which results in low productivity and a bottleneck in the process. Several wafers are rotated by the discs during the process, which may break thin wafers.

The SOPHI-30 solves the issues of the conventional ion implant process as it uses single-wafer processing for ultrathin wafers to overcome wafer breakage. The beam transport distance in the SOPHI-30 is shortened to improve beam transport efficiency. It also allows one wafer to be processed within 10 seconds and footprint is reduced by two-thirds when compared with previous ULVAC models.

The SOPHI-400 enables ultrathin wafers to be handled by single-wafer processing with acceleration up to 2.4MeV. In addition, field stop layer can be formed by using hydrogen as a next-generation process. Hydrogen forms approximately 4um-deep profile, which reduces drive power loss and improves switching characteristics. Also, hydrogen enables activation at low temperature and process by furnace (annealing) equipment without using expensive laser anneal, which can reduce total production cost.

ULVAC believes that these technologies contribute in reducing the process time and improving characteristics in the IGBT manufacturing process.

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