The research and development services of ORC for companies and universities include the following. Please contact Pekka Savolainen or the contact persons mentioned in the text for details.
With ORC's five MBE systems we are able to fabricate a wide range of material compounds based on GaAs, InP and GaSb.
Please contact Prof. Mircea Guina for details.
Our Surface Science Laboratory conducts contract research for industry and universities. Our surface sensitive research methods are applicable for product development, optimization of manufacturing processes, failure analysis, and solving problems related to adhesion, color change, oxidation etc. The methods are suitable for a wide variety of metal, semiconductor, and insulator materials in solid or powder form.
Read more about our research methods and surface analysis services (pdf, Finnish).
Please contact Prof. Mika Valden for details.
ORC has a wide variety of tools and techniques for analysing materials and devices, including the following.
Photo lithography is to replicate a mask pattern onto a wafer using UV-sensitive polymers and UV light. ORC uses a contact lithography, capable of replicating patterns with resolution and positional accuracy of 0.5 µm. Thickness of a typical resist layer (either positive or negative) ranges from 1 µm to 10 µm. Passivation, planarisation and UV-patternable polyimide coatings can also be made. Moreover, nanoimprint lithography is possible.
Semiconductors, dielectrics and metals can be etched by dry or wet etching. Dry etching uses plasma to activate the etching species. Dry etching allows preparing more anisotropic patterns than what is possible by wet etching. For dry etching ORC uses argon, oxygen, silicon tetrachloride, hydrogen, methane, chlorine and freon. Chemo-mechanical polishing is used to thin and polish semiconductor wafers.
Two methods are used for deposition of dielectrics. (i) Plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) for depositing etch masks and insulators. Gases used are silane / nitrogen (5% / 95%), ammonia, nitrous oxide, and nitrogen, which enable the formation of silicon dioxide (SiO2) and silicon nitride (SiN) layers. (ii) Electron beam evaporation, which is employed to deposit anti-reflection or high-reflection films with very precise layer thicknesses.
RTA is used to anneal metal / semiconductor contacts and semiconductor epilayers for improved performance. Annealing takes place at temperatures between 100 and 1000 ˚C under vacuum or air or nitrogen atmosphere. Typical RTA ramp rates are around 100 ˚C/s.
In device fabrication metals have important and versatile role. Metals can be used to inject current into semiconductors or act as hard etch masks, solders, heat sinks or sacrificial layers. Depending on their optical properties, metals can be used as mirrors or absorbing layers. At ORC metals are deposited by several techniques. Thin (<1 µm) metal coatings are fabricated using e-beam evaporation technique. Thicker metal coatings are made using thermal evaporation or electroplating.
ORC carries out packaging in exploratory quantities. The diced chips are attached to packages that provide heat sinking, mechanical support and protection. Upon packaging the components can be integrated with lenses or diffractive elements. The packing tools include an automated scriber /
breaker, a vacuum reflow oven, wire bonders, a die bonder and a wafer expander. Soldering is possible via preforms, vacuum evaporation or electroplating.
ORC has facilities to manufacture a broad selection of passive optical fibre components. The equipment includes a commercial glass processing station and a fiber coupler manufacturing station, as well as a custom fiber tapering device built in-house. This infrastructure enables the fabrication of high-quality fiber components such as mm-scale fiber splices, tap couplers, wavelength division multiplexers, fiber tapers, and pump combiners. Furthermore, we are able to manufacture advanced fiber Bragg gratings with a custom setup based on UV excimer laser and phase-mask technology.