Rudolph Sells Macro Systems to Asian Foundry

Rudolph Technologies Inc. announced today at Semicon West 2006 that it has sold multiple AXi 935 macro defect inspection systems to a major foundry in Asia. The systems will be installed at a Singapore facility where they will support etch processes and quality assurance. The company said the same customer is evaluating AXi performance at a second fab in Taiwan. Rudolph Technologies, which is based in Flanders, N.J., said the AXi 935 inspection system occupies an important niche, with higher throughput than micro tools and higher resolution than other macro tools, which is important for quality assurance and etch applications that require higher resolution than most macro tools can provide. Compared to its predecessor, the AXi 930, the 935 offers significantly improved throughput while maintaining the sensitivity to detect defects down to 0.5 micrometers, the company said. It provides the base (frontside) platform for Rudolph’s all-surface inspection technology which, when configured with edge and backside inspection modules, can detect and correlate defects on all surfaces of a wafer.