Heidelberg MLA150 Maskless Aligner


Refer to the Material and Process Compatibility page for information on materials compatible with this tool.
Equipment Status
: Set as UP, PROBLEM, or DOWN, and report the issue date (MM/DD) and a brief description. Italicized fields will be filled in by BNC Staff in response to issues. See Problem Reporting Guide for more info.

StatusUP
Issue Date and Description


Estimated Fix Date and Comment


Responding Staff



iLab NameC - Heidelberg MLA150 Maskless Aligner
iLab KioskBRK Lithography Core
FICShared
OwnerJoon Park
LocationCleanroom - N Bay
Max. Wafer8"/200 mm
Internal Page/wiki/spaces/BNCWiki/pages/6238756
Staff Page/wiki/spaces/BNCWiki/pages/6234280 

Sample Requirement

If you do not follow the requirements below, you will lose access. Camera is recording all your sample loading and unloading activity inside Heidelberg.

Size and thickness variation

  • Maximum expose area: 150mm x 150mm
  • Wafer: up to 8inch wafer (200mm in diameter), t=725um (+/-20um)

  • Mask: up to 9inch mask (228.6mm), t=3.05mm 

  • Piece: bigger than 10mm x 10mm in any side ( quadrant with 10mm radius not acceptable), no cleaving, must be diced, 

  • No sample mounted on the bigger carrier substrate is acceptable (mounted on pocket wafer, mounted with photoresist, crystal bond, or Santovac oil)

  • Bowed sample or sample with large thickness variation is not acceptable (PCB board, glass slide from supply room or hood area, sample with solder ball, bowed sample after thermal process). Even if you can get the good vacuum pressure, it does not mean that it will be okay with write head focus.

Resist to be exposed

  • AZ photoresist, Shipley photoresist, SPR resist
  • LOR or resist for lift off with bilayer with the above resist
  • HMDS, MCC-Primer, Surpass for adhesion promoter before the above resist
  • No SU-8 or SU-8 like resist acceptable. No laminated dry film accepted
  • All the resist other than the above resist, even if standard resist mixed with other chemical or partible, must be approved by staff
  • All the resist must be baked properly to dry the resist top surface
  • Heidelberg MLA150 system can only photoresist, not e-beam resist such as PMMA or ZED.

Sample handling on stage

  • Wear new solvent protective gloves (yellow). Do not keep using solvent gloves from previous spin-coating and soft bake.
  • Only touch the adjustment aid tool, stage, and vacuum switch button. Do not touch on mirror surface on the left side. Please follow the sign "Do not touch mirror surface"
  • Do not give much force or lean on the stage. Otherwise, the stage will need to be initialized.
  • Please use plastic tweezer on the desk or your own plastic tweezer. Metal tweezer has scratched the stage surface, which you can see the current stage surface.

Standard Operation Protocol (SOP)

Alignment Mark Design Guideline

Top surface alignment

  • Top surface alignment needs to be done in High Resolution Camera. Alignment tolerance less than 500nm can be only achieved and adjusted regularly in High Resolution Camera
  • Alignment mark shape and size: cross alignment mark bigger than 190um with 5-30um thickness
  • Field of View in High Resolution Camera: 190um x 140um (Low Resolution Camera: 640um x 480um, Overview Camera: 12mm x 9mm (top 30% area is dead spot))
  • If you like to find the alignment easily in bigger sample such as 4 inch wafer, you had better avoid Overview Camera dead spot described above.

Bottom surface alignment

  • Bottom surface alignment needs to be done in Low Resolution Camera. There is no High Resolution Camera for Back surface alignment. Overview Camera is showing top surface, not much synchronized with Low Resolution Camera in back surface alignment
  • Alignment tolerance achieved and adjusted regularly: less than 1um
  • Alignment mark shape and size: cross alignment mark bigger than 640um with 15-100um thickness 
  • Field of View in Low Resolution Camera: 640um x 480um
  • Alignment mark needs to be located on the opening of the sample stage below.

       

Frequently Asked Questions

 1. Is the MLA 150 connected to the internet?
No, the MLA 150 is not normally connected to the internet. Pattern transfers should be done via USB stick.


 2. Why can't I find my pattern in the pattern folder?

By default, the software shows patterns saved in lowercase filenames (e.g. .gds). If you've saved a file as a .GDS, these will not normally show up. To solve this, change the display to All.

Error Messages

 1. Error in the Safety Module! Please restart the device.
Please check whether the window is fully closed or not. Even if it is fully closed, please report to the staff in charge. 


 2. Error during DMD heating: Error when waiting for the heating to stop:

Error message (continued) Timeout while waiting for the DMD to stop the heating! (waited 10014 ms) The heating has been stopped. Please return to 'Setup Job', wait for a minute and try again.

Please report to the staff in charge. After pressing Setup Job button, please unload your sample by clicking "unload" button.


 3. Error during exposure: The exposure was stopped!

Error message (continued) Switching on the Laser 405nm failed! HIMTDiodeLaser 405nm: set laser ON failed! (259)

Please report to the staff in charge. After pressing Setup Job button, please unload your sample by clicking "unload" button.


References