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16 October 2006
Electrical feedthrough wafers for waferlevel packaging Conductive vias through silicon and glass wafers
Waferlevel packaging of MEMS devices by using additional cap wafers including cavities and vertical electrical vias is an alternative to integrated encapsulation processes and enables the development of new innovative MEMS solutions or simplify the packaging. Plan Optik AG in Germany offers electrical feedthrough wafers with a high density of vias through silicon and glass wafers to achieve compact device dimensions.
17 May 2006
Glass wafers for TPMS
Plan Optik AG, the world market leader in glass and fused silica wafer production for MEMS applications, offers borosilicate glass wafers for anodic bonding which meet the special requirements of safety related automotive applications. These wafers are MDF (micro damaging free) polished – a polishing method developed by Plan Optik and introduced in 2004. Wafers with this special surface treatment do not show a so called sub surface damaging which comes to light by wet etching or common semiconductor cleaning or surface activation processes. Sub surface damaging leads to small cavities and interconnections between the etched structures, weakens the bonding interface and results in a low yield. Especially in safety related products like tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) the reliability of the MEMS pressure sensor ranks in the first place and requires perfect wafer surfaces. MDF polished wafers are available a blank wafers as well as including holes and cavities produced by USHD (ultra sonic high speed drilling) – another invention of Plan Optik. MDF polished wafers complete the wide spectrum of glass and fused silica wafer options produced by Plan Optik AG - a well-established German company that has gone public with great success in the end of 2005.
13 Apr 2006
New Glass wafer production line for large glass wafers
Plan Optik AG, world market leader in glass and fused silica wafer production for MEMS applications announces the completion of a new production line for large glass and fused silica wafers. Mainly driven by optical MEMS and wafer level packaging (WLP) applications more and more device manufacturers are switching from 6" to 8" due to cost reduction reasons. The new production line at Plan Optik is designed for a capacity of up to 10,000 wafers per month and will be solely used for 8" and 12" wafers. The successful surface treatment called "MDF polishing" (micro damaging free polishing - a polishing method developed by Plan Optik and introduced in 2004) has also been implemented in this line. The implementation of a line solely developed for 8" and 12" wafers is the logical consequence of the successful expansion of Plan Optik AG in Germany which has gone public in the end of 2005 and completes the already existing, wide spectrum of glass and fused silica wafers.
09 Jan 2006
Plan Optik - Going Public
2005 was a successful and eventful year for Plan Optik - the technology leader and one of the biggest producers of wafers from glass, quartz and glass-Si-compounds has doubled its capacity because of a dramatically increasing demand for these products.
In late December, Plan Optik was going public and the success has continued: the result of the great run on Plan Optik shares was a 24 times oversubscription on the approximately 23% of shares being sold before the first trading day on December, 29. The shares are traded at Frankfurt (Open Market, Entry Standard), Munich and Berlin-Bremen stock exchange.
This success is driven by the development of own manufacturing methods e.g. for the polishing of glass wafers. So called MDF (micro damaging free) polished wafers show an impressive surface quality (no sub surface damaging) and are suitable for safety relevant devices such as tyre pressure sensors. No sub-surface-damaging means a dramatically increased yield during etching processes. Additionally the surface roughness is much below 5 Angstrom (0.5 nm) - this makes them suitable for direct bonding.
Plan Optik, a high tech glass processor, existing since 1972 and based in Germany, has focused more and more on MEMS related products from glass or similar materials (mainly borosilicate glass wafers used for wafer level packaging of MEMS). Within the last years, the wafers of Plan Optik set the standard for glass wafers for this still young market
In the near future the technologies developed and used by Plan Optik will set new standards in consumer electronics - especially for mobile phones and DVD pickup heads of the newest generation.
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