[labnetwork] Heidelberg alternatives?

[Thomas Eugene Carver]

Hi Brian,

Yes, we’ve had great luck with our two ML3 machines.   About the only benefit of the larger Heidelbergs have is their speed of writing.   The DMO ML3 machines we have are super versatile and do a really nice job of direct writing.  We do a lot of work with small chips and even tiny slivers of oddball materials.  The ML3 doesn’t have a vacuum chuck, so it can work with any size little chip, but also works on up to 8” square.   We have people who work with full wafers too, even though they could write them faster on the Heidelbergs across the street.   The ML3 makes much smoother shallow angle lines, curves, circles, etc.  We never really see any hint of “stair-stepping” (pixelization) in the written patterns, like you do on the Heidelbergs.  Even a very small ring comes out perfectly round.  People doing things like optical waveguides with long gentle curves have great results on the ML3.   We also have a lot of people doing things like making molds for micro-fluidic devices, where keeping the sidewalls of the channels as smooth as possible is very important to them.  And we have a lot of people working with 2D materials, where it’s important to be able to align an array of contact fingers very carefully to a difficult-to-see flake.  The “virtual aligner” feature makes it easy to verify that the alignment was done perfectly by placing a transparent purple digitally rendered image of the pattern you’re about to write over the microscope image.  They’re able to design custom patterns like that right at the machine, and write them, all in one session.    We have about 150 people trained on the machines.    Both 365nm and 385nm work for general lithography on broadband resists.   But the people who work with SU-8 use the 365nm machine because 365nm exposes SU-8 about 20x faster than 385nm (SU-8 is very narrow band and optimized for 365nm).

I’m happy to answer any questions you might have about the ML3s.   We’ve been really happy with them.  And DMO is the best company I have ever dealt with.   Even though they’re in England, they answer all my questions promptly and thoroughly.  They’ve even taken suggestions I’ve had on improving their software, which they incorporated into their latest software versions to make the machines work even better than when we got our first machine.   Their sales and service is technically supposed to be done by Quantum Design out of San Diego.  But the machines have been so reliable that the only real service was done remotely by DMO, or done in person by DMO when they were here to install our second machine.  If you buy a machine though, you would buy it through Quantum Design (their USA distributor).

The only complaints I’ve heard about the DMO machines are that they are a little slow when doing full wafers, and that the software home screen is kind of bland, “not elegant” as one user put it.   Apparently Heidelberg has a fancier looking home screen with nicer graphics.   I don’t care about how fancy the home screen is though, as long as it works.  And it usually works great.   We’ve never had a machine down for more than about a day.   We’ve never had any sort of mechanical issues with either machine.  It’s always been just small software-related problems, that they were able to either tell us how to fix, or fix it for us remotely using “TeamViewer” from England while we’re sleeping.

The ML3s are pretty sensitive to vibration.   If you’re on a second floor of a building like we are, you’ll want to mount the machine as close to a support column as possible.  And you’ll definitely need the floating optical bench option.   The best bet would be to have it in a basement or ground floor though on solid concrete.   The machine will only write if it senses a certain level of stability.  If they’re doing a jackhammer downstairs, it will stop writing intermittently.   Or if someone leans something that’s jiggling on the floating optical bench it will stop writing.  I also had to line the inside of both machines with vibration damping peel-n-stick material to stop the panels from resonating like drum heads due to the rumble from our HEPA filters in the ceiling.   DMO saw how well that material worked after I installed it on the insides of our panels, and said they’d probably be installing that on all future machines they make.   If you ever need some of that material though, it’s called “Dynamat Xtreme”.  You just cut it to shape with scissors, peel off the backing paper, and use a roller to press it out flat onto the sheet metal panels.  It’s a viscoelastic material which absorbs vibrations by converting them to heat.  It really works great at keeping sheet metal panels from resonating.

Good luck,
Tom




Thomas Carver
Flexible Cleanroom Lab Manager
Stanford Nano Shared Facilities
carver at stanford.edu



On Jul 3, 2023, at 1:27 PM, Tobi Beetz <tobi at stanford.edu> wrote:

Hi Brian – I can highly recommend Durham Magneto Optics as we’ve had the exact opposite experience working with them.

We bought our first DWL tool from them a few years ago. I was initially skeptical and had urged our staff to consider adding a Heidelberg. We ended up with the Durham and have been absolutely thrilled with their responsiveness and collaboration. The tool has been a huge success with our community, and we added another one last year (365nm and 385nm). Some of our users use the Heidelbergs at SNF and the ML3s at SNSF as they have some complementary features. More info on the tool athttps://snsf.stanford.edu/facilities/fab/fcr/ml3 . There is also a section below on the website that has tons of additional info that might be interesting to dig through. Finally, the price of an ML3 is another huge plus …

Cheers,

Tobi

Tobi Beetz, Ph.D.
Associate Director, Stanford Nano Shared Facilities, Stanford University, http://snsf.stanford.edu<http://snsf.stanford.edu/>

From: labnetwork <labnetwork-bounces at mtl.mit.edu<mailto:labnetwork-bounces at mtl.mit.edu>> On Behalf Of Brian K. Olmsted
Sent: Monday, July 3, 2023 11:57 AM
To: Lab Network (labnetwork at mtl.mit.edu<mailto:labnetwork at mtl.mit.edu>) <labnetwork at mtl.mit.edu<mailto:labnetwork at mtl.mit.edu>>
Subject: [labnetwork] Heidelberg alternatives?

Hi,

We are poised to buy a Heidelberg DWL 66+ but we have been having an abysmal experience with field service from Heidelberg and their lack of urgency / responsiveness has been deleteriously impacting our operations and reputation for over a year now.

Before we move forward with adding a new Heidelberg tool I wanted to reach out to the community to ask (1) if anyone uses a 3rd party for field service on Heidelberg direct-write tools that they would recommend, and (2) if there are alternative manufacturers anyone has experience with that they would recommend?

Thanks,

Brian K. Olmsted
Associate Director of Laboratory Operations
University of Minnesota | Minnesota Nano Center
cse.umn.edu/mnc<http://cse.umn.edu/mnc>
612.626.3287
olms0025 at umn.edu<mailto:olms0025 at umn.edu>

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