Crossing Automation Receives Order from Tango Systems; Marks MEMS Market Entry for ExpressConnect™

Crossing Automation, Inc. (www.crossinginc.com), today announced that it has received an order from Tango Systems to develop a custom wafer transfer platform solution. Tango Systems will take advantage of Crossing’s ExpressConnectTM equipment platform and the customization option of ExpressSolutionsTM to achieve a vacuum wafer transfer system tailored for installation into MEMS manufacturing and R&D facilities.

“The MEMS market has some unique requirements relative to mainstream semiconductor facilities, in particular wafer size and the need for smaller platforms,” said Larry Dulmage, vice president of marketing for Crossing Automation. “The solutions we deliver significantly reduce the customer’s cost to develop and manufacture a product, due in part to the fact that our ExpressConnect components offer extreme flexibility off the shelf and are able to accommodate wafers from 150 mm to 300 mm. This allows companies like Tango Systems to process different wafer sizes in a single platform, helping contain costs and demonstrating the benefits of our approach to wafer transfer systems for small and large manufacturers alike.”

Due to the small size of Crossing’s ExpressConnect components, they can be integrated directly into the 150 and 200 mm lines that are typical of MEMS facilities without further customization. The MEMS market is very diverse in its tool requirements, which range from batch to single wafer and include a wide variety of substrate types and sizes, as well as processes. An additional consideration when supplying MEMS facilities is that they typically manufacture a broad range of products, including devices, sensors and advanced packaging.

Key to the project is Crossing’s custom design engineering services, in which customers have the ability to add their own proprietary content to the standard ExpressConnect modules to create fully customized platform solutions. The company will also deliver a documentation package and sustaining engineering and customer engineered specials (CES) support.

“Crossing’s approach to wafer-level automation allowed us to meet our requirements for automated sputtering systems targeting the MEMS and R&D marketplaces for less than $1 million,” said Ravi Mullapudi, President & CEO of Tango Systems. “We found ourselves in a position where a unique system solution was needed, and quickly, to be able to take advantage of order opportunities. Crossing’s ability to integrate our proprietary elements with elements of its ExpressSolutions and meet our performance, timing and size requirements, was critical to our selection process.”

ABOUT CROSSING AUTOMATION:
Crossing Automation delivers efficient, cost-effective integrated vacuum wafer handling systems and engineering support to high volume manufacturers of vacuum process tools, including etch, CVD, clean, RTP and metrology. Crossing’s ExpressSolutions engineering services offers system integration and custom design engineering to optimize wafer-level automation systems that implement the company’s ExpressConnect automation modules and subsystems. The company’s unique approach enables its customers to develop process-specific wafer transport solutions for multi-platform strategies at a significantly lower cost than current approaches. Offering an alternative to conventional “cluster tool” technology, Crossing achieves critical manufacturing flexibility for OEMs and IC manufacturers alike.

ABOUT TANGO SYSTEMS:
Tango Systems Inc. designs, manufactures, and markets low cost sputtering systems for advanced packaging and MEMS metallization applications. Tango Systems' platforms offer a very compact footprint and can accommodate substrates with sizes ranging from 150 mm to 300 mm and film thickness from 20 Å to 5µm, a great advantage for technology up-scaling from R&D to production. AXCELA™ PVD offers industry leading throughput and reliability in excess of 75 wafers/hour with uptime of >90% in a typical under bump metallization (UBM) application. Process modules can be configured for through-silicon via (TSV), backside metallization (BSM), re-distribution layer (RDL), piezoelectric materials (AlN) as well as other metallization application. Tango Systems’ PVD metallization solutions have been in production at customer sites in US and around the world. Tango Systems’ global support and sales can meet increasing demand on lower cost metallization solutions. For more information, please visit www.tangosystemsinc.com or contact our local representatives.


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For more information: http://www.crossinginc.com