Our Facilities

Thermal Oxidations
Solid-source Diffusions
Chemical Etches
Reactive Ion Etches
Xenon Difluoride Etches
Anodic Bonding
Photolithographic Patterning
Screen Printing
Wafer Dicing
Solar I-V Curve Tracing

Thermal Oxidations



Gratings, Inc. has a Lindberg 6" diameter, three-independent-zone tube furnace capable of temperatures up to 1100C, using dry or wet oxidation.

We are capable of uniformly growing oxides on up to 50 5" diameter wafers simultaneously.

Solid-source Diffusions

Gratings, Inc. has two separate Lindberg 6" diameter, three-independent-zone tube furnaces dedicated to solid-source diffusions, capable of temperatures up to 1100C. One is dedicated to Phosphorous diffusions, the other Boron.





Chemical Etches



Gratings, Inc. has numerous chemical etches available, including industry standard RCA and Bosch etch techniques, buffered oxide etches, and low-temperature mesa etches. Using our portfolio of different technologies, we can isotropically or preferentially etch along <100>, <110>, and <111> crystal planes.

Reactive Ion Etches

Gratings, Inc. has a Trion reactive ion etching chamber.



Xenon Difluoride Etches





Gratings, Inc. has developed a Xenon Difluoride setup for isotropic etching of Silicon. Xenon Difluoride has many advantages over conventional etch processes. It is a dry process, requiring no washing or drying steps. It is highly selective to silicon versus aluminum, silicon dioxide, and photoresist. The reaction products are in a gaseous phase and do not remain on the surface. The isotropic characteristic allows for undercutting of large structures, and an etch rate of up to 40 microns per hour.

Our setup allows us to create random textures on either multi- or mono-crystalline silicon wafers, greatly enhancing the optical characteristics and performance of solar cells.

Anodic Bonding

Gratings, Inc. is capable of bonding dissimilar materials using anodic bonding processes.





Photolithographic Patterning



Gratings, Inc. has a full-service yellow room for photolithographic patterning of different wafers. Using our SVG-8136 wafer track, we are capable of tightly controlled mass production of spun wafers, coated with AZ5214E or AZP4620 photoresist materials of consistent and tightly controlled thicknesses and baking profiles. Using this system, we can process up to 45 2-6" wafers per hour. Using a Karl Suss Mask Aligner, Stepper Aligner, or Interferometric Aligner, we can tailor-make numerous devices of a wide range of sizes.

Screen Printing

Gratings, Inc. has a modified MPM SP-100 screen printer capable of very large area to small area prints on a variety of substrates, including multicrystalline and polycrystalline silicon, glass, and FR4 board. It is used to make front silver and back silver/aluminum prints on solar cells. The SP-100 is capable of semiautomatic operation and can process in excess of 200 wafers per hour.



Wafer Dicing



Many of Gratings, Inc.'s devices are extremely small in area and require sectioning from nearby devices and regions that may interfere with their performance. Our manual dicing saw successfully sections wafers at regular or manually defined intervals, at a programmable depth of cut.

Solar I-V Curve Tracing

Gratings, Inc. has developed a LabView-driven curve tracer for determining solar cell efficiency, Voc, Isc, and maximum power point characteristics for large and small area solar cells, as well as for photosensitive schottky devices requiring three terminals.