Eshylon Scientific
Streamlining Semiconductor Production with Mobile Electrostatic Carriers

Temporary bonding plays a vital role in enabling the development of advanced microelectronics by facilitating wafer handling and processing during device manufacturing. However, the traditional methods of bonding usually involve adhesives, waxes, or tapes and entail at least five different processing steps that tend to be expensive, messy and slow. These steps include cleaning the wafer surface, applying adhesive to the wafer and/or carrier, aligning the two surfaces, curing the adhesive, and debonding. Each of these steps presents a risk of damage and yield loss from residue and contaminants, especially when handling thinned dice or III-V semiconductor substrates that require specialized equipment and process chemistries.

Eshylon Scientific has revolutionized the temporary bonding process with its cutting-edge Mobile Electrostatic Carrier (MESC) technology, a highly-versatile, rapid-bonding platform for nearly all known substrates. This new technology is clean, uses no adhesives, has no yield loss, and bonding and debonding happens in seconds, enabling semiconductor manufacturers to achieve new levels of precision and efficiency in their production processes compared to temporary bonding with adhesives. The multi-patented, electrostatic carrier system provides an adhesive-free alternative that utilizes coulombic attraction to establish bonding between a reusable carrier and wafer, while eliminating the need for curing and residue removal.

Eshylon Scientific has been actively addressing several complex wafer handling problems faced by semiconductor manufacturers.

First, Eshylon’s MESC technology acts as a “facility bridge”, enabling the reuse of existing tool sets for small substrate handling, providing a cost-effective solution to the problem of substrate-tool mismatch. Eshylon’s facility bridge solution helps customers avoid costly upgrades or the need for specialized equipment, which can negatively impact ROI.
"One of the main issues is the need for a solution that can handle multiple sizes of substrates, which traditional production tools are not configured for," says Eryn Smith, founder and CEO of Eshylon Scientific. “We provide a seamless and highly-cost effective way to bridge between preexisting process tools and any new wafer format a customer is using.”

Another major application Eshylon supports is thin wafer handling, particularly for ultra-thin and delicate substrates, which can result in breakage, low yields, and slow throughput. The increasing demand for 2.5D and 3D packaging applications also leads to diverse device handling challenges that require custom solutions. Eshylon's bonding platform enables the fast and delicate release of ultra-thin substrates, crucial for achieving high yields and fast throughput.

"We’ve had many customers call us worried because they can’t find a way to handle paper-thin, otherwise non-bondable exotic substrates,” says Smith. “They’re always pleasantly surprised when we show them we can bond their material instantly and easily, and give them a rigid processing platform for their wafers.”

Lastly, Eshylon’s technology has been increasingly used for chamber particle abatement, which can be used to minimize the generation and buildup of particles on chuck surfaces during processing and to clear contamination errors from the chamber without breaking vacuum. One of its recent customers was a research lab with an etching tool that was down and needed a solution to get it back up and running. Eshylon's MESCs were already being used by the customer, and after a discussion, Eshylon suggested a solution that involved charging a carrier, inverting it, and running it through the process tool to clean the particles off the aligner. It got them back up immediately, an approach to process tool cleaning that is increasingly being used by customers, including even the foundry that manufactures Eshylon's carriers.

Eshylon's MESCs have the versatility to handle substrates of any shape and wafer thickness, accommodating sizes up to 300mm, allowing for seamless integration into diverse manufacturing processes. This flexibility has made them a critical component in the semiconductor, automotive, defense, quantum computing, biomedical, and other industries. With a remarkably quick room temperature bond/debond time of seconds, Eshylon's cutting-edge technology enables high throughput and rapid production capabilities for R&D, pilot line, and high-volume manufacturing.

One of the standout advantages of the MESC platform is its extraordinary yield, guaranteeing damage-free and delicate release, thereby achieving near-perfect yields. This exceptional performance ensures optimal results in the production process. Furthermore, the MESC platform's bonding process is effortless and clean, eliminating the need for intermediate layers, adhesives, and additional cleaning steps. This streamlined approach significantly reduces production costs, making it the most cost-effective option in the industry in terms of total ownership cost.

Thanks to its varied capabilities, Eshylon has taken the lead in providing a rigid yet mobile platform for handling challenging substrates during device fabrication. With more than a dozen patents protecting its technology, Eshylon’s innovation hasn’t slowed down. It has recently partnered with Kawasaki Robotics to offer a high-volume automated bonding platform, and it has a new chip-to-wafer chiplet handling platform coming to market in 2024. It has also recently developed a custom platform for handling glass substrates, which is being adopted to enable some of the most advanced applications in the space. In addition to its standard, small footprint standalone bonding unit, Eshylon has begun offering two embedded hardware options for its technology—an integrated front-opening utili y pod (FOUP) and an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) design, which provides flexibility to customers on how they want to implement the technology.

"We strive to maintain a close relationship with our end-users, listening intently to their challenges. We’re always trying to anticipate their next set of bonding and wafer handling problems, and do our best to clear their path before they get there" says Smith.

Its commitment to listening to customer needs and offering solutions has helped Eshylon expand its customer base to include the world’s largest and most innovative technology players. With a triple-digit year-over-year growth rate and little competition in the space, the company is well-positioned to continue meeting the requirements of its customers and delivering cutting-edge solutions.