Introducing Alumina Material

Alumina ceramic components have excellent properties such as high hardness, high mechanical strength, super wear resistance, high temperature resistance, high resistivity, and good electrical insulation performance. They can meet the complex performance requirements of semiconductor manufacturing in special environments such as vacuum and high temperature. They play an irreplaceable and important role in semiconductor manufacturing production lines. Their applications cover almost all semiconductor manufacturing equipment and are key components of semiconductor production equipment. With the continuous development of the semiconductor industry, the importance of alumina ceramic components in the industrial chain will become more prominent.

As the chip feature size decreases, semiconductor equipment has more stringent requirements on components, and its density, uniformity, corrosion resistance, etc. are required to be higher. In recent years, domestic and foreign scholars have developed a variety of new processes to improve the sintering conditions of alumina ceramic materials, so that they can achieve rapid densification of materials at lower sintering temperatures, such as self-propagating high-temperature sintering, flash sintering, cold sintering, and oscillating pressure sintering. Among them, cold sintering is to add a transient solvent to the powder and apply a large pressure (350~500MPa) to enhance the rearrangement and diffusion between particles, so that the ceramic powder can be sintered and densified at a lower temperature (120~300℃) and a shorter time.

At present, the global integrated circuit manufacturing process has developed to a more advanced process at the 3-nanometer level. Semiconductor equipment and semiconductor equipment precision components must be continuously developed and upgraded, and process improvements must be made to meet downstream manufacturing needs. Once semiconductor equipment is updated, the specific requirements of new equipment for components will change synchronously. With the development of semiconductor technology, the performance requirements for alumina ceramic components are getting higher and higher, including higher wear resistance, high temperature resistance, and better electrical insulation. Industry trends tend to develop higher purity, finer structure alumina powder materials, and adopt advanced preparation technologies.

Alumina ceramics have very high purity requirements when used in the semiconductor field, generally greater than 99.5%. In the semiconductor field, alumina ceramic parts are one of the key parts of semiconductor equipment. Most of them are used in chambers closer to the wafer. In semiconductor equipment, they are classified by use and are mainly divided into annular cylinders, airflow guides, load-bearing fixed, hand-gripped gaskets, modules, etc.

In the etching process, in order to reduce the contamination of the wafer during plasma etching, high-purity alumina coatings or alumina ceramics with strong corrosion resistance are selected as protective materials for the etching chamber and the chamber lining.

In the plasma cleaning process, corrosive gases containing highly reactive halogen elements such as fluorine and chlorine are used. The gas nozzle is usually made of alumina ceramics, which are required to have high plasma resistance, dielectric strength, and strong corrosion resistance to process gases and by-products. At the same time, the internal precision hole structure is used to accurately control the gas flow.

In the semiconductor manufacturing process, the wafer may undergo high-temperature treatment, such as etching, ion implantation, etc. As a carrier for wafer transmission, the alumina wafer carrier can ensure the stability and safety of the wafer during the transmission process. The alumina wafer carrier has good thermal conductivity and can effectively disperse and export the heat generated by the wafer, thereby protecting the wafer from thermal damage.

In the handling of wafers, a ceramic robotic arm made of alumina ceramics will be used. It will be installed on a wafer handling robot, which is equivalent to the robot's hand. It is responsible for carrying the wafer to the designated location, and its surface is in direct contact with the wafer. Because wafers are extremely susceptible to contamination by other particles, they are generally carried out in a vacuum environment. In this environment, robotic arms of most materials generally find it difficult to complete the work. The materials used to make the robotic arms need to be resistant to high temperatures, wear-resistant, and have high hardness. Due to the requirements of working conditions, they are generally made of extremely high-purity alumina ceramic materials, and the accuracy and surface roughness of ceramic parts need to be guaranteed.

Semicorex offers high-quality Alumina ceramic parts in semiconductor, including SiC coatings and TaC coatings. If you have any inquiries or need additional details, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us.

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