Advanced Materials

Introducing Automated Optical Inspection for Advanced Materials Manufacturing

Nanotronics’ product suite is used to promote rapid scaling of new materials such as gallium oxide and aluminum in the production of highly effective semiconductor devices. Advancing the commercialization of ultra-wide bandgap materials fosters efficient, mass producible, robust manufacturing.

Our compact and modular nSpec® system is used across the globe to inspect wafers at every step of the manufacturing process from the initial bare wafer stage through post dicing and packaging. nSpec® software and hardware solutions are configurable to customer specifications enabling recognition, classification, and measurement of nanoscopic flaws for correction within production processes at a fraction of the cost of a traditional AOI system.

Advantages

1. Our proprietary machine learning technology deploys supervised learning, data augmentation, pattern recognition, and local instancing to maximize data integrity, security, and robustness. 
2. Through the implementation of Nanotronics’ nTelligence™ platform, nSpec® software can be synced with all inspection devices dispersed throughout a fab, enabling engineers to find correlations between defect identification data and process tool parameters so that they may make timely corrections to fabrication errors.
3. AIPC® is designed to reinforce a factory’s operations, and by synthesizing existing data with actively collected data, fills in informational gaps that a network of dispersed operators naturally produce.

Industry Applications

1. Nanotronics’ advanced machines and intelligence platform is used within chemical plants, polymer labs, battery production, and graphene production facilities to produce highly repeatable results using AI, video object detection, and robotics.
2. Nanotronics incorporates our nSpec® suite in tandem with the nControl™ platform to address any risks associated with potential contamination and prevent potential malicious activity. 

Solutions

Inspection

Nanotronics’ AOI tools are deployed for easy identification of contaminations and manufacturing errors throughout assembly processes to ensure the highest quality of final product. Inspection allows manufacturers to collect granular microdata and essential metrics at all stages of the supply chain to propel faster, more reliable data-driven decisions that speed innovation, increase manufacturing yields, reduce waste, and lower costs.

DFM

Nanotronics brings over a decade of manufacturing experience to our customers’ facilities. Our suite of inspection, AI, and security tools enable us to ensure that prototypes and manufacturing processes are designed to yield an optimized final product.

Security

Incorporating AI into manufacturing processes adds an extra layer of security to your industrial facility. AI can remotely monitor for process variations that cause drastic factory shutdown and allows operators to make key decisions, preventing critical errors that slow and stall production.

The Nanotronics Difference

Nanotronics products are modular and can be adjusted to meet the unique requirements of any factory. Our unprecedented lead times range from 120-180 days, allowing us to provide customers with the highest quality AOI systems as quickly as possible so that they may expedite fabrication soon after needs are determined. The nSpec® suite is cost-effective and highly compact with a fraction of a traditional AOI system’s footprint, making it less demanding in its spatial requirements. Advanced imaging is optimal for quality assurance as it adds a layer of rich, human-legible and presentable data to factory operations.

Contact sales@nanotronics.co for information on partnerships and to learn more about our product suite.

Frequently Asked Questions

What kind of automation is optimal for advanced materials manufacturing?

AI is most applicable to inspection because it can make an intelligent assessment based on previous pass/fail instances and incorporate that knowledge into future projects. Computer vision is optimal for metrology as it requires defined tolerances and is not obfuscated by the computational black box.

What are the primary methods of factory automation?

There are three primary methods of automation used in production: fixed automation, programmable automation, and flexible automation. Fixed automation operates on a more static process control model in which programmed commands are tied directly to hardware, making it less mutable over time. Programmable automation is ideal for producing smaller quantities of varied products (small batch manufacturing), and production equipment is reprogrammed with each batch of new products. Flexible automation is an extension of programmable automation but is significantly less costly as it eliminates time-consuming reprogramming, and production equipment does not need to be altered in between batches. Instead, flexible automation operates on a smaller subset of less varied products, so that processes can be easily reconfigured at a computer terminal.