From R&D to production. One architecture. Four equipments. One process.
Wet thermal oxidation of AlAs and AlGaAs is a structurally critical step in III-V photonic device fabrication. The oxide aperture it produces simultaneously defines current confinement, optical mode volume and long-term device reliability in VCSELs, EELs and photonic waveguides. Its geometry, uniformity and reproducibility set the yield ceiling of the process.
Equipment designed for this step must monitor and control the oxidation front in real time, terminate the process on measured aperture diameter — not elapsed time — and transfer that process capability across equipement and sites without tool effects that require requalification. ALOXTEC equipment was designed to meet these constraints from the ground up
The four equipment share a single process and metrology system. The same furnace chamber geometry, gas delivery architecture, in-situ dual-camera vision system, Stop-on-Aperture endpoint logic and UniformPerf© uniformity option are common across all three oxidation equipment.
The operational consequence is direct: a process characterised on the GEN1.4L Manual generates data in the same format as the same process on the GEN2.0 HV Auto. Recipes transfer without modification. Engineers trained on one system operate any other without retraining. For organisations managing multiple sites, tool generations or product development stages, this coherence eliminates an entire category of transfer risk and qualification cost.
| ALOX GEN1.4L Manual | ALOX GEN1.4L Auto | ALOX GEN2.0 HV Auto | CHAROX 1.0 – Pre-sales open | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary use | Process development + R&D | Production + multi-product dev | High-volume production | QC metrology |
| Throughput | 200–600 wafers/month | 800–1,000 wafers/month | 1,800–2,400 wafers/month | Contact ALOXTEC |
| Loading | Manual | Automatic | Automatic | Manual or Automatic |
| Wafer rotation and in-suti measurement during oxidation | ✓ (world first) | ✓ (world first) | ✓ (world first) | N/A |
| Integrated cycle | 3-in-1
|
4-in-1
|
4-in-1
|
Characterisation only |
| UniformPerf© compatible | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | N/A |
| SEGS/GEM | ✓ SEMI E30/37/40/42 | ✓ SEMI E30/37/40/42 | ✓ SEMI E30/37/40/42 | ✓ SEMI E30/37/40/42 |
The GEN1.4L Manual is the best starting point for organisations at development stage. As volume grows, recipes transfer without modification to the GEN1.4 L Auto or the GEN2.0 HV Auto. The CHAROX 1.0 is additive to any configuration — a parallel QC asset, not a replacement for the integrated oxidation metrology.
The ALOX GEN1.4L Manual is the best entry point to the ALOXTEC portfolio: a compact, full-capability equipment designed for development-phase production, university cleanrooms and research laboratories. It delivers the complete process and metrology capability of the ALOXTEC architecture — Stop-on-Aperture endpoint detection, dual-camera in-situ vision with monochromator, full T/H/P process window — with manual wafer loading and full operator control.
Min-max aperture uniformity : min-max 0.6 µm without UniformPerf©, min-max 0,3 µm with it.
Run-to-wafer deviation (With UniformPerf©) : σ < 0.1 µm on 6” wafers.
The 3-in-1 capability (Oxidation + Characterisation + Annealing) eliminates the need for separate metrology tools during process development. Throughput: 200–600 wafers/month.
As the process development reference across the ALOXTEC equipment portfolio, all recipes created on the GEN1.4L Manual transfer directly to the GEN1.4L Auto and GEN2.0 HV Auto without modification.
The ALOX GENL 1.4 Auto combines the full process depth of the ALOXTEC portfolio with automated wafer loading and a process innovation: wafer rotation and in-situ measurement during oxidation.
For the first time in wet thermal oxidation, the wafer rotates during the active oxidation phase. This addresses the root cause of residual aperture non-uniformity — local temperature and water vapour gradients within the furnace chamber that produce directionally biased oxidation rates. By rotating the wafer, the equipment continuously averages these gradients across all azimuthal positions. Critically, the proprietary in-situ vision system continues to deliver real-time aperture measurements throughout the rotation — a world first in the field.
Aperture uniformity reaches σ < 0.25 µm on 6-inch wafers without UniformPerf©, and σ < 0.1 µm with UniformPerf©. Run-to-run mean aperture deviation stays below 0.25 µm or below 0.1 µm based on the chosen system. The 4-in-1 cycle integrates automated loading, oxidation, characterisation and annealing in a single uninterrupted sequence. Throughput: 800–1,000 wafers/month on 3″ to 8″ formats, with full SECS/GEM connectivity.
The ALOX GEN2.0 HV Auto delivers the same process performance as the GEN1.4 equipment— identical process window, identical aperture uniformity, identical in-situ vision metrology — at a throughput of up to 2,400 wafers per month.
Built for fully automated production environments, it combines robotic wafer handling with full SECS/GEM compliance (SEMI E30, E37, E40, E42). Its defining production advantage is zero-requalification recipe portability: because the GEN2.0 shares the same process chamber geometry, gas delivery architecture and vision system as the GEN1.4L Auto, all process recipes transfer directly from development to production without tool-effect correction or process revalidation. This is not a software feature — it is the consequence of a deliberate architectural decision to maintain physical process equivalence across the range.
Pre-sales open
The CHAROX 1.0 is a dedicated optical characterisation station delivering the same measurement capabilities as the integrated in-situ vision systems embedded across the ALOXTEC equipment portfolio — including dual-camera architecture, a monochromator, automatic pattern recognition, and five simultaneous measurement outputs — within a fully independent system mounted on a vibration-isolated optical table.
It is designed for QC workflows that operate independently of the oxidation cycle: pre-oxidation EPI inspection, post-process verification, incoming metrology on non-ALOXTEC wafers, and dedicated QC stations in fabs where the oxidation tool operates at full capacity. Available in manual or fully automated configurations with SECS/GEM connectivity.
We are able to offer our clients an end-to-end approach thanks to our technical skills and the experience of our teams.
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