How is Additive Manufacturing Helping the Semiconductor Industry?

Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, has become essential to the semiconductor industry. This manufacturing technique allows manufacturers to design and create custom components that meet the unique needs of their products.

The use of additive manufacturing can significantly improve manufacturing productivity, reduce costs and enable new product designs. Find out how additive manufacturing is helping the semiconductor industry.

How is Additive Manufacturing Helping the Semiconductor Industry?

Ever Increasing Demand

The demand for semiconductors is increasing dramatically as more and more products depend on them to function. The manufacture of consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets and desktops, but also industrial and military equipment such as sensors, microchips and lasers are driving the demand for semiconductors. To cope with this, the semiconductor industries need new capital equipment to maintain and innovate their silicon processing. At the same time, the semiconductor production system is becoming ever more complex. The aim is to achieve smaller, more powerful and more energy-efficient microprocessors.

Capital Goods in the Semiconductor Industry

Therefore, to remain competitive, semiconductor industries must equip themselves with high-performance and innovative capital equipment. They need to ensure that the equipment at their disposal functions properly, including a rapid supply of spare parts. However, companies that manufacture lithography or fabrication machines are rare. Existing companies are saturated and cannot immediately meet the needs of the semiconductor industry. Manufacturers may have to wait a long time to obtain this equipment. This latency has consequences for production and competitiveness of the company.

How is additive manufacturing helping the semiconductor industry? Many manufacturers are turning to additive manufacturing because it allows them to print capital equipment to repair their existing machines and to manufacture highly sophisticated objects. Finally, additive manufacturing eliminates many of the constraints associated with conventional production processes and allows for the creation of custom parts that would be difficult, if not impossible, to produce using traditional methods.

Innovation in the Manufacturing Process

The semiconductor production system is undergoing a period of rapid change as technology continues to evolve to meet the needs of the industry. Process automation is increasing efficiency and reducing defects in the manufacturing process. As such, there is growing interest in additive manufacturing for semiconductor production. With 3D printing, components can be manufactured layer by layer using computer-aided design (CAD) files to create complex geometric designs. Additive manufacturing innovates the process of wafer processing or lithography.

Integrating an additive solution into has so many advantages, such as:

• High precision;
• Maintenance or optimisation of production;
• Saving time and therefore maintaining competitiveness in a competitive market;
• Significant cost savings (reduced waste and use of less expensive materials for prototyping).

ATG Technologies Continues to Grow in the Semiconductor Industry

ATG Technologie is a leading French company in the design and manufacture of special machines. ATG is continuing its growth in the field of semiconductors, notably through the acquisition of Focussia, a company specialising in the computer design of communication protocols.

ATG Technologies is an expert in industrial solutions. We have been supporting manufacturers in the implementation of their transformation project towards Industry 4.0 for more than 20 years.

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