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Improved silicon wafer processing for ESA’s X-ray observatory “Athena”
With the Athena project, the European Space Agency will launch the largest X-ray telescope ever built into space. A new kind of optics had to be invented in order to achieve the goal of looking deeper into the universe than any previous X-ray observatory missions. scia Systems, a high-tech company based in Chemnitz, Germany, supplies crucial technology to produce these optics. One of the current most important missions of the European Space Agency (ESA) is the largest space-based X-ray telescope ever built: Athena, the Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics. This mission is the second ‘Large’ mission (L2) in the ESA Cosmic Vision programme with the theme of the “Hot and…
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New multilayer coating system for wafers up to 300 mm dia. by magnetron sputtering
The scia Multi 300, the new magnetron sputter system by German thin film equipment manufacturer scia Systems, produces precise multilayer-stacks on 300 mm wafers. The Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) uses the system already to produce flexible and printable magnetic field sensors. In the volume production of semiconductor components, besides many quality requirements, the yield of usable elements is a crucial factor when selecting the equipment. One way to improve the yield is to use 300 mm wafers (12 inch) instead of the long common 200 mm (8 inch) wafers, since less edge area is unusable here. This fact has been taken into account by the German thin film equipment manufacturer scia…
