At a glance
| Booth | I3000 |
| Country | GB |
| Website | clas-sic.com/solutions |
Company profile
Clas-SIC Wafer Fab describes itself as the world’s first dedicated open foundry to manufacture Silicon Carbide power semiconductors, enabling fabless design houses and major semiconductor players to enter the SiC market quickly. Its tech stream lets fabless design houses new to SiC design on proven process design kits using process knowhow in fabrication and high-voltage termination. Its low-rate production service transitions technology devices into low-rate production and supports varied customer lifecycles using license fabs to move toward high volume. Its licensing service is aimed at larger wafer fabs seeking to scale from concept to high-volume manufacture and accelerate entry into SiC and wide bandgap opportunities. Clas-SIC combines SiC processing with reliability-proven design kits for JBS/MPS SiC diodes and MOSFETs from 650V- >3.3kV, while customers are designing devices in development at 6.5kV and above. The company presents this model as a cost-effective route to market. It reports an established customer base across Europe, China, Taiwan, Brazil and North America and seeks collaborations in Taiwan with fabless design houses, research institutes, wide bandgap supply-chain companies, developers of high-efficiency high-power conversion products and sensors, and end users of Wide Band Gap semiconductors.
Exhibits
Clas-SIC enables customers to move from lab to fab and into low or medium production volumes through fast development and prototyping of new SiC devices, supporting development and seeding samples through medium-volume production and then facilitating transfer to a high-volume foundry partner. Reliability-proven SiC Process Design Kits are available for planar MOSFETs and JBS/MPS diodes, with released kits including 1200V, 1700V and 3300V MOSFET Process Design Kits and a JBS/MPS Diode Design Kit. Clas-SIC offers device processing, process-module solutions and individual process capabilities, and its Lochgelly facility achieved the NMI Manufacturing Site of the Year Award in December 2022. Its listed process modules include alignment target, implant hard mask, carbon cap implant anneal, MOSFET gate dielectric and gate polysilicon, backside ohmic contact, frontside n+ and p+ ohmic contacts, Schottky contact, MOSFET gate and source contacts, power metal, passivation, backside tri-metal, wafer test, prototype reliability of packaged parts, and thinned-wafer backside ohmic contact. Its listed solution categories include SiC Devices, Silicon Carbide Foundry, Sub-contract Services and Fast Prototyping, spanning concept, prototype and manufacture. Its low- to medium-scale SiC production capacity is presented as providing a time-to-market advantage, while customer R&D is supported by over 200 man-years of Silicon Carbide processing expertise and a library of off-the-shelf Process Module IP intended to minimize technical risk and optimize R&D cycles and manufacturability. Its toolset can process 150mm SiC wafers through JBS/MPS diode and MOSFET flows, and the company also discusses fabrication of other SiC devices and partial wafer processing such as laser scribe, ion implant and carbon cap anneal. In-house capabilities include laserscribe for Si and SiC, i-line photolithography down to 0.5um, negative-acting photodefinable polyimide and cure, plasma oxide and nitride etch on LAM4520, plasma silicon, polysilicon and SiC target etch on LAM9400, and plasma metal etch on LAM9600. Additional capabilities include resist strip by plasma ash, Piranha and solvent strip; wet metal, oxide and polysilicon etches; pre-furnace cleaning with a Mercury acid processor; and oxidation furnaces up to 1300°C using N2, O2, H2, N2O, NO and Cl source gases. The facility also lists LPCVD for polysilicon, silicon nitride and low-temperature oxide, polysilicon doping by furnace diffusion, implant anneal with a Centrotherm Activator capable of 1750°C, and rapid thermal anneal with a Mattson 2800 capable of 1250°C using N2, Ar and forming gas. Deposition and metallization capabilities include PECVD for silane oxide, TEOS oxide and Silicon Nitride; sputter for Ni, Ti, TiW, Al and AlCu; and back sputter on an STS XM90 with Ti, Ni and Ag capability. Ion implantation uses a ULVAC IH-860PSiC for N, P and Al ions up to 400keV, with 1.2MeV available through multiple-charge ions, temperatures from room temperature to 600°C, beam parallel within ±0.3°, twist from 0-360°, and tilt from 0-60°. Other listed capabilities are wafer thinning to 175um, backside laser anneal, automated test up to 10kV IDSS, 12kV BVDSS and 200A forward pulsed, and characterization using a Carl Zeiss Sigma SEM with EDX.
Capabilities and products
- Low-to-medium-volume 150mm SiC diode and MOSFET wafer foundry services
- Rapid SiC device prototyping
- Support for transferring SiC devices to high-volume foundries
- SiC process technology licensing
- 1200V/1700V/3300V planar SiC MOSFET PDKs
- JBS/MPS SiC diode PDKs
- Laser scribing of Si/SiC wafers
- i-line photolithography down to 0.5µm
- Photodefinable polyimide patterning and curing
- Plasma etching of oxides and nitrides
- Plasma etching of silicon, polysilicon and SiC
- Plasma metal etching
- Resist stripping by plasma ash, Piranha and solvents
- Wet etching of metals, oxides and polysilicon
- Pre-furnace acid cleaning of wafers
- Wafer oxidation up to 1300°C
- LPCVD deposition of polysilicon, silicon nitride and LTO
- Polysilicon doping by furnace diffusion
- Ion-implant annealing, including carbon-cap processing, up to 1750°C
- Rapid thermal annealing up to 1250°C
- PECVD deposition of silane oxide, TEOS oxide and silicon nitride
- Ni/Ti/TiW/Al/AlCu metal sputtering
- Ti/Ni/Ag wafer backside sputtering
- N/P/Al ion implantation up to 400keV, or 1.2MeV using multiply charged ions
- Wafer thinning to 175µm
- Wafer backside laser annealing
- Automated 10kV IDSS/12kV BVDSS/200A pulsed testing
- Device characterization by SEM/EDX
- SiC alignment-target process modules
- SiC ion-implant hard-mask process modules
- MOSFET gate dielectric and polysilicon processing
- SiC frontside and backside ohmic contact processing
- SiC Schottky contact processing
- MOSFET gate and source contact processing
- SiC power metallization
- SiC passivation
- Reliability testing of packaged-device prototypes