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Equipment and Tooling for MNTThe emerging markets for MST/MEMS (Micro Systems Technologies / Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) products created a demand for specialized equipment. The first to fulfill that demand were suppliers of tools including Deep Reactive Ion Etchers (DRIE), waferbonders and backside aligners. Dedicated MST/MEMS suppliers are still in the forefront of this market. Spin-offs from universities were started to fulfill (niche) demands, whilst established companies entered this arena at a later stage, offering adapted processing tools developed for other industries, such as those specializing in thin film processing. More interestingly, even the (large) semiconductor equipment manufacturers have begun to show an interest. Within this context, there is now available a mixture of general equipment facilities, designed and developed for other applications such as semiconductors and also equipment adapted or specially tailored for Micro-Nano Technologies (MNT) production.
This chapter categorizes the equipment market into the following general areas: Front end equipment Back end equipment Nanotechnology equipment Test and measurement equipment
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