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USHIO AMERICA, INC., BEGINS MARKETING NANO-IMPRINT VUV ASHING
SYSTEM "CHIPs"
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Incorporated into Nano-Imprint Lithography
Equipment, CHIPs Allows Non-contact and Damage-free
Removal of Photoresist Residue from Templates
Cypress, calif., FEBRUARY 23, 2011 - USHIO America,
Inc. (Headquarters: Cypress, California; President
and Chief Executive Officer: Kenji Hamashima, http://www.ushio.com),
a leading provider of specialty and general-
illumination lighting solutions as a wholly owned
subsidiary of USHIO Inc. (TOKYO:6925)(Headquarters:
Tokyo, Japan; President and CEO: Shiro Sugata,
http://www.ushio.co.jp), today announced that the
company plans to start marketing the nano-imprint
VUV (Vacuum Ultra Violet) ashing system "CHIPs
(Compact HiPower System)" in the US on March 1,
2011. Incorporated into the nano-imprint lithography
(NIL) system to be used for fabricating circuit
patterns of a variety of devices including LEDs,
MEMS, functional films, and biochips, the CHIPs
allows non-contact and damage-free cleaning, surface
improvement, and ashing of templates and workpieces.
NIL is a lithography technology that transfers a
circuit pattern by directly imprinting a template
(or mold) with the circuit pattern on a workpiece (a
resist-coated silicon, sapphire, or film substrate).
It has the advantage of being a low-cost process,
allowing large-area pattern transfer, and being
suitable for mass-production. NIL already has been
put into practical use for fabricating circuit
patterns with a line width at a micro-meter (μm)
level. NIL has evolved with further research and
development efforts to establish a finer-pattern
process technology at a nano-meter (nm) level.
Today, the NIL process faces the following
challenges caused by putting a workpiece into
contact with a template, and they are becoming
obstacles for fabricating finer patterns as well as
enhancing productivity:
Challenges for NIL:
1.Contamination of templates with resist residue
2.Increase in resist fill time and fill failures
3.Deterioration of release property between a
template and a workpiece
Problems in Conventional Solutions
Wet- or dry-cleaning equipment needs to be
separately installed to clean the templates used for
a certain number of process cycles by removing them
from the NIL system. This causes downtime, thus
lowering the productivity. Also, the wet-cleaning
equipment has some disadvantages: it has an
insufficient cleaning capability, causes a risk of
generating chemical residue, and requires additional
processes (such as drying and waste disposal). The
dry-cleaning equipment using plasma, meanwhile, has
disadvantages in that it causes damage to a
workpiece and requires additional components (such
as a vacuum chamber).
Solutions by CHIPs
In order to meet these challenges, USHIO
successfully developed its new nano-imprint VUV
ashing system "CHIPs" by applying and optimizing its
lighting-edge technologies to NIL to achieve
non-contact and damage-free high cleaning power
using VUV light. In addition, the CHIPs can be
incorporated into the NIL equipment to allow a
reduction of the downtime of the NIL equipment as
well as automation of the NIL process - thus
enhancing the productivity and yield and thereby
lowering the CoO of the NIL process.
USHIO will exhibit and participate in the "SPIE
Advanced Lithography 2011" conference, to be held on
February 27 (Sun.) through March 3 (Thu.), 2011, at
the San Jose Convention Center and San Jose Marriot
(Headquarters Hotel) in San Jose, California, USA
(Booth No. 428).
USHIO will strive to work on providing lighting-edge
solutions for a variety of challenges in processing
of finer patterns of various devices.
About USHIO AMERICA, INC.
USHIO AMERICA, INC., is a leading provider of
specialty and general Illumination lighting
solutions. Based in Cypress, California, and
established in 1967 as a subsidiary of USHIO Inc.
(Tokyo, Japan), USHIO America now carries over 3,500
general lighting and specialty products. These
Lighting-Edge Technologies™ are provided for a
variety of industries, such as general illumination,
audio-visual, photographic, stage, studio and
television, semiconductor, LED, FPD, printed-circuit
board, video projection, cinema, UV curing,
germicidal, horticultural, graphic arts, flashlight,
scientific, medical, dental, ophthalmic, infra-red
heating, and many other uses. For further
information, visit www.ushio.com.
About USHIO INC.
USHIO INC. (President and CEO: Shiro Sugata) was
established in 1964. The company handles a variety
of lighting equipment, halogen lamps for OA, UV
lamps for exposure used in semiconductor/liquid
crystal display/LED manufacturing processes,
high-brightness discharge lamps for data projectors
and xenon lamps for movie projectors. It also enjoys
a strong market share with many of its products,
manufacturing and distributing various optical
devices and movie projectors that incorporate its
in-house lamps. The head office is located in
Chiyoda Ward in Tokyo. The consolidated sales for
the term ended March 2010 were 119,000,000,000 yen,
and there are about 4,700 employees. See
www.ushio.co.jp.
Company Contact:
Toru Fujinami
USHIO America, Inc.
Tel: +1-714-229-3165
Fax: +1-714-229-7165
E-mail: tfujinami@ushio.com
Agency Contact:
Jiro Hanaue
Hanaue & Company, Ltd.
Tel: +81-466-29-1361
Fax: +81-466-29-1104
E-mail: jhanaue@gmail.com
View
data spec. sheet
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