Veeco Instruments Inc. announced today that multiple leading semiconductor manufacturers have placed repeat, multi-system orders for Veeco’s LSA101 and LSA201 Laser Annealing Systems. In addition, a leading-edge logic customer that has been evaluating Veeco’s LSA system has now designated the platform as their production tool of record for high volume manufacturing. As semiconductor manufacturers reduce form factor and improve performance, laser annealing technology plays an increasingly important role in high-volume chip production.
Laser annealing is a millisecond annealing technology used in front-end semiconductor manufacturing to lower resistance of key transistor structures by activating dopants while reducing the overall thermal budget for technology scaling. These annealing steps are instrumental in determining the electrical properties and performance of the resulting devices.
“We have seen tremendous adoption of our laser annealing platform as demonstrated by the orders from the world’s top semiconductor manufacturers and being selected by another high-volume logic customer,” commented Adrian Devasahayam, Ph.D., Veeco’s Senior Vice President, Product Line Management. “Advanced digital applications like 5G, artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and machine learning, combined with the current chip shortage, are calling for foundries and IDMs to ramp capacity while meeting increasingly stringent chip process demands. Veeco’s laser annealing advantage is its broad scalability and adaptability for different applications.”
Veeco’s laser annealing technology was the leading contributor to record semiconductor revenue in 2021. In late 2021, Veeco announced it had shipped its first laser annealing system from their new San Jose manufacturing facility designed to serve the semiconductor market. The new facility brings increased capacity to meet the surging demand for both laser annealing and lithography technologies.
