Photolithography in a new light – Cleanrooms for a high-tech industry

Abb X: View into a cleanroom protected by special yellow light, where sophisticated equipment for photolithography is manufactured.

Abb X: In the technical center, the air is energy-efficiently conditioned and prepared for the process.

Abb X: Completed clean and tidy rooms set up at the new location

Abb X: equipped with an AR glasses, the customer can move through the cleanroom even before it is built.

Heidelberg Instruments designs, develops, and manufactures maskless laser lithography systems for the production of microstructures, serving the global photolithography community in both direct writing and photomask production. Application areas include MEMS, micro-optics, advanced packaging (3DIC), ICs, flat-panel displays (FPD), microfluidics, sensors, and other analog and digital electronic components. The systems are used in research and development, rapid prototyping, and industrial production in more than 50 countries.

New facilities have now been established at a new location near Heidelberg for the production of these complex systems and devices.

Becker Cleanroom Technology has planned and turnkey constructed the cleanrooms and controlled environments tailored to customer needs: on a total area of approximately 1,500 m², the company is well-equipped for the future and provides optimal environmental conditions for production and development.

The technical requirements are complex: temperature and humidity ranges must be reliably and year-round maintained; in yellow light areas, only specific wavelength ranges of light are permitted to prevent endangering sensitive products and processes.

Equally important is the energy efficiency of the cleanrooms. For many years, Becker Cleanroom Technology specialists have paid special attention to this topic in every project – energy prices continue to rise, and environmentally friendly solutions are gaining importance.

Through sophisticated cooling and ventilation technology, energy consumption for the customer has been minimized in the Heidelberg project: with optimized outdoor air treatment, reduction of fresh air volumes through targeted overflows, and state-of-the-art control technology, the cleanroom systems can operate at full load and in setback mode energy-efficiently – saving the customer real money over the entire lifespan.

Even during the planning phase, new approaches were taken: the entire project was created using new BIM-compatible software, opening up new possibilities for integrated planning with all stakeholders. But the customer also benefits even before the cleanroom construction begins: employees equipped with AR (Augmented Reality) glasses could virtually walk through the future cleanroom in the still empty hall: the cleanroom geometry is superimposed into the user’s field of view, allowing them to see scale relationships, spatial feeling, and room conditions in reality.

There is a clear trend towards such applications, and Becker Cleanroom Technology has been advancing this technology for some time under the term "The Pure 4.0". The AR application described above is just one of many advantages. You can see and experience more about this at the upcoming Lounges 2023 in Karlsruhe.