Wafer Reclaim and Recovery - Can You Trust It?

Wafer Reclaim and Recover Service - equipment
from Noel Technologies, Campbell, CA

As a semiconductor manufacturer, one of your primary concerns is the quality of the product you produce and this is the reason why you put high consideration on using good equipment or avail for services only from reputable providers. This is so true when it comes to using wafers.

The kind of wafer (also known as substrate) is critical in the manufacturing of electronic products (or their components); thus, you need to ensure that the ones you use are of good quality. With that in mind, you are most likely to get brand new ones instead of resorting to wafer reclaim. But for the purpose of reducing material and operation costs, you might be open for a second thought and try wafer reclaim and recovery instead. But why? Can I trust the process? - you might ask. The following might give you some useful insights on why wafer reclaim could work great for you:

Reducing costs -there are lots of wafer reclaim companies that offer full wafer recovery, which can extend the material's life; thus, getting brand new ones is minimal - a cost-effective solution, indeed.

The quality of reclaimed wafers - you might be skeptic when it comes to the quality of reclaimed wafers, but be aware that many wafer reclaim companies are capable of having your wafers mechanically re-polished by removing film, surface scratches, and residual patterns, making them appear and function as good as new.

Can be used multiple times - wafer reclaim companies can facilitate the process many times until wafers are justtoo deeply scratched or too thin to be reclaimed. So, this can be a great advantage as this strategy provides a positive implication in terms of cost-saving as well as on environmental impact.

Today, lots of companies in the semiconductor industry consider wafer reclaim and recovery as one of their important strategies in reducing production costs, without compromising product’s quality. More and more are realizing its value as part of their process - they consider wafer reclaim first before resorting to getting brand new ones.

Anodizing, Metal Plating, and Wafer Reclaim - Industry Processes You Might Want To Be Familiar With

As I have mentioned in my bio, technologies and industries really fascinate me. This is the reason why I spend most of my leisure time reading materials related to these topics and then share them online through this blog. I just thought it would somehow help readers, especially those who are just new in the industry, familiarize some components that play a vital role for the industrial sectors continue to thrive.

This time, I wanted to post about some industry processes that I happened to read recently. These are anodizing, metal plating, and wafer reclaim.

Photo Credit: GMP Plating, Inc. - a metal plating company
based in Morgan Hill, CA.

Anodizing - this is an industry process that is very important to the metal industry; the main goal of this is to protect metal materials from rapid ruining caused by rusting. Another reason is to protect metal from wear and tear, which is necessary for industries that use metal materials as a main component for their business - e.g. manufacturing, construction projects. The anodizing process use various metallic elements such as aluminum, magnesium, and titanium. Aluminum anodizing is perhaps the most popular because this element is considered to be the most ideal. However, gold anodizing service is getting popular as well.

Plating - metal plating has the same objective - this process is aimed at protecting the metal from rapid deterioration brought by corrosion or rusting. Metal that has undergone plating become more corrosion-resistant, making its life longer. While the anodizing process is carried out by increasing the  the thickness of the naturally-occurring oxide coating on a metal material, metal plating involves the addition of a coating of a different metal to the surface plated.

Wafer reclaim - On the other side of the industrial world, another industry process that is also important -- this time, to the semiconductor industry -- is wafer reclaim. With wafer reclaim service, wafer / thin film's life is prolong and this is done by recycling or recovering so that a used wafer can be used again, which can really minimize the costs as there is no need to constantly buy new wafers.

Related: Wafer Reclaim and Recovery