Semiconductor Platforms

A key competency of Applied Materials is in the engineering of high-productivity, highly-reliable wafer handling platforms. These platforms provide the core of the majority of Applied’s semiconductor manufacturing systems. Multiple wafer processing stations, or chambers, are clustered around a central vacuum transfer station, which contains wafer handling robots to transfer wafers from one process chamber to another.

Applied’s principal platforms – Endura, Producer, Centura and Centris – enable maximum commonality between systems, across dozens of different wafer processing applications. This commonality ensures the highest achievable levels of reliability and makes it straightforward for Applied’s customers to integrate new chamber technologies into their fabs, because they are already familiar with the software, major subsystems and maintenance procedures.

The products of decades of refinement, Applied’s vacuum wafer handling robots are remarkable engineering feats in their own right. Employing sophisticated magnetic coupling to completely eliminate rotating seals and virtually eliminate contaminants that can damage sensitive chips, Applied’s wafer handlers achieve remarkable levels of precision, repeatability and uptime, handling millions of wafers every year.

Applied Endura

The Applied Endura platform is the most successful metallization system in the history of the semiconductor industry. Endura systems revolutionized semiconductor metallization by delivering breakthrough technologies and levels of reliability, serviceability and flexibility that far surpassed existing capabilities. The vast majority of microchips made in the last 20 years have been created using one of the over 4,500 Endura systems that have shipped across the globe to over 100 customers.

The Endura system has a long list of firsts: it was the first ultra-high vacuum production system in the industry, enabling enormously improved film purity which reduced electromigration by an order of magnitude, and allowed our customers to fabricate the first reliable aluminum interconnects. It had the first magnetically-coupled vacuum robots, legendary reliability and the first staged vacuum architecture with up to nine process chambers, giving the system a unique ability to mix and match process chambers to create integrated multi-step process sequences that is still unparalleled today.

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Applied Producer

The Applied Producer is the industry’s fastest, most cost-effective wafer processing platform, capable of processing more than three wafers every minute in a highly compact footprint. Designed for high-speed wafer processing, the Producer features a robot that can simultaneously transfer four wafers between its three paired processing stations and unique double-decker vacuum loadlocks.

More than 3,000 Producer systems have shipped worldwide. The Producer is used by every chip manufacturer in the industry for fabricating all types of devices through the most advanced technology nodes. The Producer system has established Applied’s leadership in all advanced CVD chipmaking processes, including low k, strain engineering, litho-enabling films, thermal films and high-temperature PECVD applications.

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Applied Centura

The Centura is Applied’s most versatile platform. Launched in 1992, over 8,000 Centura systems have been shipped to customers around the world for an unmatched range of applications including ALD, CVD, epitaxy, etch, photomask fabrication, PVD, plasma doping, plasma nitridation and RTP, as well as integrated multi-step processes such as high-k transistor gate stack fabrication.

The Centura architecture clusters four processing stations and two auxiliary chambers around a central transfer module containing an ultra-reliable magnetically-coupled vacuum robot.

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Applied Centris

The youngest member of Applied’s family of semiconductor processing platforms, the Centris clusters up six independent process chambers and two plasma clean chambers, uniquely incorporated into the vacuum loadlocks,  around a high-speed transfer robot enables the processing of up to 180 wafers per hour – making the system nearly twice as fast as competing alternatives.

The Centris platform incorporates “smart” system monitoring software and NIST-traceable reference standards to assure industry-leading uniformity and repeatability on every wafer processed – a critical requirement for high yield in tomorrow’s highly-complex chip designs.

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