ARI is a member of the Berkeley Microfabrication Laboratory Affiliates. This provides ARI staff with year-round 24h access to a wide range of 4" and 6" wafer CMOS and MEMS processing equipment on UC Berkeley campus.

Detailed process catalog from the UC Berkeley Microlab

Consulting and Process Development: ARI staff has over 6 years of experience using the processes outlined below, developing and tailoring them to specific customer fabrication needs. We frequently utilize a majority of the available equipment in our own research projects where we successfully fabricate nanodevices, MEMS, as well as microfluidic and RF devices. ARI can help you integrate the processes such as lithography, dry etching, and deposition, among other, to become part of an integrated solution and can also help you significantly reduce the cost of obtaining your desired results.

Following processes apply to 4" wafers and in most cases to 6" wafers. Many of the processes can be applied to single die or other smaller substrates as well

Wafers available for processes

Silicon wafers - n type, p type, various conductivities, single- or double-side polished
Silicon on insulator (SOI) wafers
Quartz and Pyrex wafers

Thermal Oxidation, Diffusion, Deposition

Silicon dioxide - wet thermal oxide, dry thermal oxide, low-temperature oxide (LTO) un-doped or doped (PSG), LPCVD and PECVD
Silicon nitride - low stress silicon nitride (tensile) available, LPCVD and PECVD
Polysilicon - doped or undoped
Evaporation and sputtering of various metals - W, Al, Cr, Au, Ni, Pt
Diffusion and sintering furnaces
Electroplating of metals

Etching

DRIE - Deep reactive ion etching (Inductively coupled plasma process) - Silicon
RIE - Reactive ion etching - Silicon, polysilicon, oxide, nitride
Plasma etching - Silicon, polysilicon, oxide, nitride, aluminum, tungsten
XeF2 -xenon difluoride etching - Silicon
Various wet isotropic and anisotropic etches, e.g. KOH, TMAH, EDP, HNO₃

Photolithography and mask-making

Contact lithography (1.0 um)
10x stepper (projection) lithography (1.0 um)
Mask making - 5" plates, light-field and dark-field

Miscellaneous

Chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP)
Miscellaneous testing, wafer dicing, wet-bench processes, etc.
In-line test equipment, ellipsometer, electron microscopes, profilometers
Film-stress characterization
Probe stations, parametric analyzers