ITEC manufactures simple semiconductors at a mass scale. In the semiconductor industry they work after the wafer production, so the processing and assembly of the wafer. They have more than 30 years of experience and produce over 250 million semiconductors per year. Currently development is going on on the next generation of wafer stages. Instead of a planar motion, they used a rotational stage, which is a real shift in how wafers are being processed. In this case they use a flexible foil which is then actuated using dual torque motors.
ITEC also has an innovation department that is involved in laser technology. Traditional pick and place machines are not able to perform fast enough because of mechanical limitations. Laser based technologies allow release times of << 1ms and with a much lower release energy. The challenges that TU Delft and ITEC are working on a consistent release of the die with laser actuation. Then the next part is that the die needs to be caught by another microfluidic gripper to complete the transfer. After this the next challenge is how to make sure that the die sticks to the other side without any force input. Lastly, then moving the die using acoustic levitation is another major challenge.
The presentation was very interesting, with a lot of emphasis on the innovation aspect, which is always nice to see. They really also answered our questions well, even though some they were not allowed to answer fully.