Plasma-Therm to distribute Trymax’s resist ashing products in North America

Trymax Semiconductor Equipment BV of Nijmegen, The Netherlands has granted plasma process equipment maker Plasma-Therm LLC of St Petersburg, FL, USA exclusive rights to distribute all of its NEO products for ashing applications in North America.

Plasma-Therm and Trymax can now address all ashing, polymer removal and dry cleaning applications in the served markets, for all wafer sizes including 12 inches. The alliance provides a full set of stripping technologies to customers in North America, from low temperature at 50°C to high strip rate at higher temperature.

“Partnering with Trymax allows Plasma-Therm to offer resist strip and ashing products which complement well our existing high-denisty radical flux (HDRF) technology, which targets polymer removal and low-damage surface treatment,” says Plasma-Therm’s business development manager Yannick Pilloux.

“The agreement with Plasma-Therm is a critical component to our North American expansion strategy,” says Trymax’s executive VP Ludo Vandenberk. “By combining forces with Plasma-Therm, we are able to better serve US front-end, MEMS and back-end manufacturers with solutions that span the ashing and non-critical etch process steps. We are eager to get started serving our customers with the competitive advantages that our technologies can offer.’’

Trymax’s NEO products for ashing/etching and descum accommodate 150mm, 200mm and 300mm substrates. The bridge tools are fully flexible for processing multiple different substrate types, such as silicon, gallium arsenide (GaAs), silicon carbide (SiC), LiN, LiT, eWLB (embedded wafer-level ball grid array) and Taiko wafers from R&D to high-volume markets.