Twin Creeks can't innovate any more ??
They're the company that published the particle beam saw idea in 2012 for solar cells, and that's why GT Advance bought them the same year.
The combination is what attracted Apple to GT Advance.
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Apple's New Manufacturing Partner, GT Advanced, Uses Particle Accelerator to Cut Sapphire Glass Production Costs
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Twin Creeks can't innovate any more ??
They're the company that published the particle beam saw idea in 2012 for solar cells, and that's why GT Advance bought them the same year.
The combination is what attracted Apple to GT Advance.
It really is an Ion Implanter
This machine is really nothing new other than a scaled up version of legacy Ion implanters used in the manufacturing of chips.
This design of this machine from appearance uses a spinning wheel to like an Applied Materials Horsham divisions implanter to scan the wafers in front of the ion beam. The individual lines extending out to the wafer holders at the outer diameter are for cooling water most likely because the wafers get really hot from the 100kv+ atoms slamming into the surface of the wafers. Don't want them delaminating while spinning around. Most likely the ion source is fed H2 gas that is Ionized into a plasma to dissasociate the atoms and then they are propelled and focused by electromagnets into the wafer most likely being scanned back and forth across the spinning wafers to achieve uniform implantation.
Pete
This machine is really nothing new other than a scaled up version of legacy Ion implanters used in the manufacturing of chips.
This design of this machine from appearance uses a spinning wheel to like an Applied Materials Horsham divisions implanter to scan the wafers in front of the ion beam. The individual lines extending out to the wafer holders at the outer diameter are for cooling water most likely because the wafers get really hot from the 100kv+ atoms slamming into the surface of the wafers. Don't want them delaminating while spinning around. Most likely the ion source is fed H2 gas that is Ionized into a plasma to dissasociate the atoms and then they are propelled and focused by electromagnets into the wafer most likely being scanned back and forth across the spinning wafers to achieve uniform implantation.
Pete
beat them or join them
why not just become an investor then and benefit from your wisdom instead of whining about consequence? becoming a shareholder is not some exclusive club.
why not just become an investor then and benefit from your wisdom instead of whining about consequence? becoming a shareholder is not some exclusive club.
Did they actually stumble onto this technology, like so many other discoveries, or was this dreamt-up and developed precisely for this purpose?
Very impressive, either way!
Very impressive, either way!
Does a particle accelerator of this kind use massive amounts of energy?
Does anyone have an idea about how many sheets of ultra-thin sapphire glass it is able to produce, say, an hour?
Does anyone have an idea about how many sheets of ultra-thin sapphire glass it is able to produce, say, an hour?
I got interested, dug around, and apparently you're bang on. As you said, the ions are focused by an electromagnet onto the spinning wafers cooled by water.
Readers: the beam doesn't slice the material. It implants the hydrogen protons to a certain depth, and when those are heated up later, that splits off a clean slice.
The technology was known, just not applied in something so "small". (The photo doesn't show the accelerator part very well. The machine is still like 25 feet long and 12 feet high or more.)
This particular machine was built specifically to make ultra-thin solar cell wafers from materials like sapphire, without the waste of material caused by mechanical sawing, and to a very thin layer. That's what attracted GT Advanced to buy them to slice up their sapphire boules.
From their documents, each machine can make up to 1.5 million slices a year. No wonder Apple wanted to fund a bigger factory with more machines.
Of side note: the machine invention was financed in part by Mississippi taxpayers to the tune of $27 million. When the patents were sold for $10 million to Advanced GT, Mississippi tried to get some of that, but failed. So they're suing them.
Thanks!
Good job digging up the material on the machine. These machines were developed as you said for Solar Cell production. The material they were originally designed for was single crystal silicon wafers. These would have dramatically reduced silicon usage especially since single crystal produces the highest quality cells. Too bad the state of MS lost out on the promise of Solar Production. BTW the cost of Poly Silicon, the stuff pure enough to make silicon wafers was out of control a few years ago due to solar putting too much demand in the market for normal production capacity. Supply has caught up with demand so prices have equalized.
Good job digging up the material on the machine. These machines were developed as you said for Solar Cell production. The material they were originally designed for was single crystal silicon wafers. These would have dramatically reduced silicon usage especially since single crystal produces the highest quality cells. Too bad the state of MS lost out on the promise of Solar Production. BTW the cost of Poly Silicon, the stuff pure enough to make silicon wafers was out of control a few years ago due to solar putting too much demand in the market for normal production capacity. Supply has caught up with demand so prices have equalized.
