The Beneq P400A is built specifically to coat different types of substrates in an optimized batch size – large enough to offer significant capacity, but small enough to maintain excellent uniformity within batches and short cycle times. Our customers use the P400A for optical coatings and applications where ALD is used on glass or metal sheets.
BENEQ P400A
Batch ALD
Just the right size. The Beneq P400A is commonly used for batches of substrates with diameters ranging from 20mm to 300mm. The batch setup is optimizable for specific parts, sheets, wafers, or other substrates.
Total batch size for flat substrates is up to 8m2.
Design and Setup
Every customer is unique. Allow us to select and design the optimal tool setup and ALD process to suit your substrate and application.
The P400A’s versatile design makes it easy to switch between different setups of reaction chambers and substrate holders. This means you can transition smoothly from R&D to volume production using the same ALD system. Beneq provides tailored application development as well as pilot production support, so you can test things out before setting up your own ALD manufacturing capacity.
Smaller Reaction Chamber for new process development 165x25x750 mm
Larger Reaction Chamber for production 250x250x800 mm
Thick Film Stacks
Ideal ALD tool for thick film stacks (> 1 μm). Thick film stacks for large batches require significant amounts of precursor while producing a lot of residues and by-products. To address these challenges, the P400A is equipped with high-capacity precursor sources and precursor deactivation and filtration systems.
The result of 35+ years of development in industrial production with large batches of >1µm thick film stacks, the Beneq P400A is reliable, 24/7.
Precursors
Oxides, nitrides, sulfides, metals, and more. Choosing the right process and precursor materials can be tricky. When to use high vs low temperatures? Are the precursor materials safe to use?
Ask our experts to help you find just the right material or material combination for your application. The Beneq P400A can go from room temperature up to 550°C and easily handle gaseous, liquid, and solid precursors, including toxic, pyrophoric, and corrosive precursor materials.
Maintenance
Simpler and less frequent maintenance. ALD tools depositing thick film stacks often require monthly cleaning. The P400A’s high-capacity pump line filter enables the tool to run for months without maintenance, even in high-volume manufacturing.
Changing ALD reaction chambers can take a whole day due to the need for them to cool down, but the P400A cuts this down to minutes. Its design allows the operator to simply pull out the reaction chamber and other parts that require cleaning.
Multi-Chamber Design
Avoid unnecessary downtime from maintenance. The Beneq P400A uses multiple reaction chambers that are continuously switched between each run. This allows you to minimize maintenance-related production downtime.
Preheating Oven
Proprietary preheater by Beneq. Our optional preheating oven shortens the heat-up time, further increasing your throughput.
The challenge when coating 3D optics is to deposit the coating with high uniformity over an arbitrary topology in a simple manner. The common techniques used for optical coatings, including magnetron sputtering, evaporation, electron beam evaporation (EBE) and ion beam sputtering (IBS), all so called line-of-sight methods.
In this webinar Sami Sneck, the Business Executive of Beneq showcases examples of conformal and uniform optical coatings on complex 3D objects and more
A common method of protection is to deposit protective films or coatings onto metal surfaces. A variety of protective coatings, such as nitrides or metal oxides, with high corrosion resistance, wear resistance, and good mechanical strength, have been widely studied and tested.
Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) is an unmatchable moisture barrier and encapsulation solution for electronics and semiconductor components. The ultra-thin ALD moisture protection can be applied in different phases of the production process: wafer-level, chip-level, package or module-level, and/or Assembled Printed Circuit Board (PCBA) level.
ALD offers the only way to create conformal ultra-thin protective coatings on surfaces with high aspect ratios and complex 3D shapes. ALD is also a great solution for encapsulating sensitive surfaces. Here are 3 of Beneq’s ALD moisture barrier customer cases from the electronics industry.
We did a little research and looked at the list of all customer projects from our Coating Services unit and checked what industrial ALD applications our customers have run on Beneq equipment. These were the 3 most popular industrial ALD applications.
There is a solution for protecting all types of silver components, objects, and products; nSilver Anti-Tarnish coating. Our nSILVER anti-tarnish coating creates a protective barrier against oxidization, which prolongs the shelf-life of silver products and saves in polishing costs.
Optical lenses and prisms are used to redirect the light waves, they’re also used to allow a specific light wave to pass through, or to reflect specific wavelengths.
Today we’re talking to Dr Mikko Söderlund, Head of Industrial Solutions at Beneq, to find out more about flexible electronics and how they benefit from ALD coating.
Ever since we earlier this year announced the licensing of rotary spatial ALD technology and launched Beneq R11, our new rotary tool for plasma enhanced spatial ALD, we have received a steady flow of inquiries and questions about where we see the new equipment being the most useful.
According to recent industry news, smartphone market leaders, such as Apple, Samsung and LG, are planning to adopt ALD-based thin film encapsulation solutions for flexible AMOLED displays. Details of the plans have not been confirmed, but this is nevertheless exiting news for the whole ALD community.
Electronic components and devices do not tolerate hot and humid conditions. Most people know this and avoid exposing electronics to vapors and liquids.
Our complete thin film service concept, Thin as a Service, which we launched last year, has been received well. The customers seem to appreciate the possibility to get a quick proof of concept of new ALD applications with ALD-123 as well as the shorter time to production enabled by our Coating Services.
Earlier we shared examples of industrial use of ALD in moisture barriers. Now we continue with another typical area of ALD applications: Optical coatings.
The best-known Finnish object in the Star Wars sequel, however, probably still is the Planetoid Valleys necklace Princess Leia wore in the original movie released in 1977. Most people know that the father of the necklace is Björn Weckström, but we can now reveal that the protective powers of this beautiful piece of jewelry are produced using Beneq equipment as the secret weapon.
A typical WVTR value of our nCLEAR ALD barrier coatings is 4×10-6 g/m2 per day. That is a million times less moisture through the surface than with the best parylene alternative.
The world is getting thinner. The never-ending quest to miniaturize and digitalize everything while saving our limited resources requires innovative technologies that allow creating ultra-thin reflecting layers, strengthening coatings, nanolaminates and protective barriers in spaces where just a few years ago nobody imagined it would be possible to operate.
