Nearfield Instruments (NFI) and Technolution Advance (TNL) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish a strategic partnership for delivery and value engineering of several critical electronics modules for NFI’s series products, starting with the QUADRA product line. TNL will develop, industrialize, and deliver these modules, with a focus on improving manufacturability, value engineering, SEMI compliancy and performance enhancement, closely related to NFI’s product roadmap.
NFI has developed and realized its first semiconductor metrology product, named QUADRA, based on the revolutionary mechatronics architecture of HT-SPM. Now, NFI is preparing for series production. NFI intends to work with TNL in a strategic partnership to further industrialize and value engineer some of its product’s sub-systems.
“In our strive to deliver our disruptive solutions to the complex process control challenges the semiconductor manufacturing industry encounters in its continuous strive towards even more powerful and lower power-consuming electronics, the role of strategic development partners, such as Technolution, is important. The development of our highly complex mechatronics systems requires a continuous pushing of technology limits. In Technolution we have found a reliable partner and leader in the field of high-end electronics and data processing. By constantly challenging each other and other partners, in a true innovation ecosystem way, NFI will be able to provide the innovative metrology solutions the semiconductor industry requires for current and next-generation device manufacturing.” comments Hamed Sadeghian, President and Chief Technology Officer of Nearfield Instruments.
Jan van der Wel, Founder and CEO of Technolution commented: “We are proud of being successful in designing and building NFI’s high-speed data acquisition system and the related system control including integrating several subsystems and operating elements needed. We worked closely with NFI to solve the complex electromechanical puzzle of the scanning probes in the core of this semiconductor metrology tool. The innovation of NFI unlocks the great potential of Scanning Probe Microscopy such as in-line wafer metrology during semiconductor production. The potential emphasizes the importance of setting up a partnership for the industrialization and world-wide support of the technology to guarantee the reliability and availability of NFI’s products and services to its customers.”
About Nearfield Instruments
Nearfield Instruments B.V. (NFI), was founded in January 2016 as a spin-off of TNO. NFI is a semiconductor metrology equipment company developing and delivering ground-breaking process control metrology solutions for the worldwide advanced semiconductor IC manufacturing industry.
QUADRA, the first product of NFI, is a high throughput Scanning Probe Metrology system (HT-SPM) that enables an entirely new approach to in-line 3D process control metrology for both wafer fab Process Window Discovery as well as Process Window Expansion & Control. QUADRA provides unique, angstrom level precise, non-destructive high-aspect ratio 3D metrology on even the most challenging critical layers, such as Gate and FinFET structures.
About Technolution Advance
Technolution is an authority in the field of integration of electronics and software. Under its brand Technolution Advance it creates solutions for high-tech applications for the semiconductor industry and leading scientific institutions. Thanks to the company’s long experience with the design and development of advanced instruments, it has a great deal of in-house knowledge. Technolution Advance’s clients are startups, scale ups, global enterprises and scientific organizations that specialize in semiconductor equipment, optics and imaging, med tech and life sciences, among other fields. Seated in The Netherlands, Technolution also has branches in Denmark, Sweden, England, and the United States of America.
