New Equipment and Process Capabilities

HKUST has been awarded the CRF Collaborative Research Equipment Grant (CREG) from the Research Grant Council in 2020/21, C6002-20EF. The project which purchased a high-accuracy wafer polisher and the bonders for heterogeneous integration is led by Prof. Andrew POON.

NFF(CWB) greatly appreciates the leadership of Prof. POON and the Research Grant Council’s financial support for this project.

This proposal aims to incorporate state-of-the-art equipment to establish a collaborative research platform for heterogeneous integration. The platform requires the acquisition of three pieces of synergistic processing equipment that had not been available in Hong Kong: A high-uniformity chip/wafer polisher, a high-accuracy chip-to-chip/chip-to-wafer bonder and a high-force wafer-to-wafer bonder.

All the equipment were delivered to HKUST, and the chip/wafer polisher went into operation in 2022. Other equipment are being installed.

A high-uniformity chip/wafer polisher.

A high-accuracy chip-to-chip/chip-to-wafer bonder.

A high-force wafer-to-wafer bonder.

A new oxidation furnace for Silicon Carbide (SiC) device fabrication has been installed in NFF(CWB) phase 2 laboratory. This equipment is supported by RGC’s Research Impact Fund awarded by Prof. Kevin CHEN. The equipment is undergoing process acceptance test with the manufacturer, and it will go into operation shortly after the test is completed.