Tystar Corporation
The Furnace of Choice for all CVD Processes

Semiconductor manufacturing involves a crucial process called Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD).

The furnaces used for CVD use a complex system to create a vapor deposition of the desired material onto the substrate. The lack of proper maintenance can lead to particle contamination, nonuniform film thickness, and reduced device performance. As a result, performing routine maintenance and replacing worn-out components becomes essential.

Tystar Corporation is a reliable partner in this regard. The serviceoriented, solutions-focused electronics and semiconductor apparatus supplier focuses on diffusion, oxidation, and LPCVD furnace systems, as well as related machinery. It provides custom designs, retrofits, system upgrades, scheduled maintenance, and technical support for semiconductor diffusion furnaces and CVD equipment.

“Our focus on innovation, efficiency, and reliability, along with the ability to offer customized solutions to clients, makes us a trusted partner,” says Dr. Wayne H. Choe, CEO of Tystar.

Focused on the Equipment Tools

Tystar’s CVD tools stand out in the market due to their patented heat-plug design. This design guarantees exceptional compactness and cost-effectiveness, providing significant benefits. The smaller footprint ensures a substantial cost advantage as it occupies about 30 percent less cleanroom space. The equipment is designed to produce the same results using 30 percent less energy and process gases.
Tystar stands out in the industry by specializing in creating tools that are tailored to specific needs rather than focusing on producing mass-market tools for commodity products such as memory chips, CPUs, and GPUs. Instead, they are working with world-class universities and research labs to develop new CVD processes.

Tystar realizes that the process specifications set forth by specialty chip manufacturers are diverse, and meeting them requires substantial R&D effort.

To this end, it provides a proper choice of the heater element, process tube design modification, recipe development, gas loop design modification, and boat design modification.

For instance, if a customer wants to produce metal-free, thick silicon oxide, Tystar uses a process tube designed to withstand positive pressure and high temperature for days or even weeks. Its record of oxide thickness is 20 um. It also has a thermo-fluid dynamics solution that inherently prevents the formation of haze or particles on the nitride surface. This is beneficial for clients that give the highest priority to hazefree and particle-free nitride surfaces. For customers looking for a process solution that makes it possible to build a stressfree, defect-free, and geometrically well-conforming oxide or nitride at a low temperature (80-200 C), it offers a photo-enhanced CVD solution.
Tystar’s customized solutions are a result of its extremely close working relationship with university customers and its engineering staff’s knowledge of deposition process engineering. This makes it more of an R&D organization than a typical equipment assembler.

Responding to the Diverse Industrial Needs

Its strength is in the expediency of response to diverse industrial needs. When a customer approaches the company with a technical challenge, it first evaluates whether the issue can be resolved quickly. It then works with its university customers, comes up with solutions, and delivers them to the clients.

The furnaces that Tystar designs are extremely robust and reliable, leaving no room for discrepancies. Even if a malfunction occurs, the operations can be switched from auto to manual, ensuring the continuation of work until technicians arrive.

To up its ante, the company has also created a strong customer-servicing culture. Whatever the client’s request, it has the bandwidth to address it on time and with precision. Tystar has a dedicated technical support team and a customer consultation team with over 30 years of experience in providing clients with state-of-the-art services.

“When I assumed the CEO position in the company, I established a few policies that were communicated clearly to all employees,” says Dr. Choe. “The first policy is to respond to any inquiries or requests for solutions within 24 hours, regardless of whether we have an immediate answer or not. If we don’t have an immediate solution, we will provide the customer with an estimated timeline for a resolution. We will keep our customers informed and engaged if the estimated time is exceeded. We never leave the customer in the dark, and we persist until a satisfactory resolution is reached.”

Pushing Process Limits

Tystar believes that its customers are knowledgeable and discerning when it comes to investing in equipment upgrades and acquisitions. To ensure it can provide comprehensive answers to their inquiries, the company relies on an extensive process database it has developed and updated over the past 40 years.
“In situations where we need additional data in a parameter space we have not previously explored, we work with one of our university partners to achieve this goal. These collaborative efforts have consistently helped us push process limits to new records and expand our knowledge base, ultimately benefiting both the company and customers,” says Dr. Choe.

Three Primary Areas of Focus

Tystar also offers Photo-Enhanced CVD, Plasma-Enhanced CVD, and Fiber Preform MCVD. It has more than 1600 material processing units installed across universities, research facilities, and tech companies.

For the future, Tystar has three primary areas of focus.

First, its market penetration in Asian markets is not yet complete, and they have only a small share of the European market. It aims to increase its presence in these regions.
Second, to meet the rapidly evolving needs of the industrial sectors, including MEMS, sensors, optoelectronic devices, and other specialty microchips, it will continue to focus on R&D and further diversification of its product lines. It also has ongoing product development projects in plasmaenhanced CVD and high-temperature CVD that need to be completed.

Finally, in order to achieve the technical and marketing goals, the company is actively seeking additional capital to pursue its objectives more aggressively. Tystar will apply the extra funds in research and development to improve marketing efforts and expand its operations. This will strengthen its competitive position in the market.