Tokyo : Tanaka Holdings Co., Ltd. (the holding company of Tanaka Precious Metals) today announced that Electroplating Engineers of Japan Ltd. (EEJA), which operates the Tanaka Precious Metals’ plating business, has developed “POSFER-E Series”, compact, highly-functional and fully-automated semiconductor wafer electroplating equipment at a competitive price and launched on July 5.

The “POSFER-E Series” is fully-automated semiconductor electroplating equipment for volume production of up to 8-inch wafers. In addition to its smaller footprint (3,400mm in width and 1,950mm in depth), “POSFER-E Series” has achieved 12,780 wafers per month throughput.

The price has been reduced by approx. 40% and its footprint reduced by approx. 40% while throughput has increased by approx. 150% compared to the POSFER-C Series (5,650mm in width, 2,000mm in depth, 8,500 wafers per month throughput). Furthermore, its unique cup structure capable of agitating the plating solution powerfully near the wafer surface, results in an improvement in embedding deep vias(*1) and thickness uniformity.

Semiconductor wafers up to 8 inches are used for smartphone components such as condensers, wireless LAN modules, bluetooth modules and memory and LEDs (light emitting diodes). Originally, the POSFER-C Series could be installed in a clean room, but as semiconductor manufacturing equipment has become smaller, it has become difficult to install large plating equipment.

Furthermore, the POSFER-C Series also presented the problem of being expensive due to the use of many parts to provide high productivity. In order to resolve these issues, EEJA has successfully developed the POSFER-E Series by fundamentally modifying the structure of the plating equipment such as reducing the number of cups by providing faster plating using a high current density, and adopting a dual arm robot to increase the efficiency of transportation. From July 5, a single plating type capable of forming a single layer of plating is sold as part of the lineup of the POSFER-E Series. Furthermore, in spring of 2014, a multi-plating type capable of forming two or more layers of plating is scheduled to be added to the POSFER-E Series and go on sale.

EEJA will sell the POSFER-E Series mainly in Japan and the United States, and aims for annual sales target of 1.2 billion yen. Moreover, in the future, an effort will be made to further expand the business by developing compact and fully-automated plating equipment for volume production of 12-inch semiconductor wafers.

New distributor is assigned in the United States to increase sales of plating equipment throughout America

To coincide with the launch of the POSFER-E Series, EEJA has concluded a distributor agreement with Tanaka Kikinzoku International K.K. (a subsidiary company of Tanaka Precious Metals; TKI), which handles import and exports sales of the Tanaka Precious Metals.

At the same time, a representative agreement was also concluded with Vacuum Engineering & Materials Co., Inc., (VEM) which has superior sales channels spanning throughout the entire United States, as a new representative for the sale of plating equipment in the United States. Upon sales, VEM will conduct marketing activities to customers and TKI will provide quotations and credit operations services. This will enable EEJA to expand its sales channels that were centered on the west coast even to the entire United States.

Until now, sales of EEJA plating equipment have been centered on customers in the west coast area where the semiconductor industry is thriving, but inquiries have been increasing from customers throughout the United States due to the growing demand of electronic components for smartphones. Because of this, EEJA has seen great growth potential in the entire United States, and decided to assign TKI and VEM as new distributors for its plating equipment.

In many cases, plating equipment manufacturers sell their plating equipment in the United States through distributors. EEJA, just like other manufactures, has concluded a representative agreement with Carmel Chemicals Inc. located at Santa Clara, California. Carmel Chemicals is a company performing sales activities based on the west coast area, and has made numerous sales of wafer bump plating equipment and plating equipment related to IC lead frames to large customers. In addition to Carmel Chemicals, EEJA also concluded agreements with TKI and VEM in order to expand sales of plating equipment to customers throughout the entire United States.

EEJA sells fully-automated electroplating equipment including the “POSFER Series” and semi-automated electroplating and electroless plating equipment in the United States. By adding TKI and VEM as plating equipment distributors, EEJA aims to increase sales in the United States six times by 2016.

EEJA will exhibit at SEMICON West 2013 to be held at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California for three days from July 9 (Tue) through July 11 (Thu). Technical staff will constantly be on-site in the exhibit booth 1619 to respond to interviews.

Source : ACN Newswire