Applied Materials just announced the release of its new Charger PVD system, which can produce double the amount of wafers compared to competitor’s products.

From a company press release, here are the technical details of the system:

“Packaging facilities need a fast, dependable metallization workhorse to maximize wafer output and minimize the system redundancy burden imposed by slower, less reliable alternatives,” said Steve Ghanayem, vice president and general manager of Applied Materials’ Metal Deposition and Front End Products Business Unit. “By blending our proven PVD* process technology with packaging-specific innovations, we’ve created a highly productive, cost-efficient solution that is already churning out wafers in high volume production at multiple customers around the world.”

Key to the Charger platform’s high productivity is its streamlined modular architecture that easily expands from three to five processing stations to sequentially deposit multiple thin films while keeping the wafer in an ultra-clean, ultra-high vacuum environment. Incoming wafers are conditioned using novel Isani wafer treatment technology that ensures a low-resistance, low-contaminant interface between the incoming device and the metal films to be deposited while also delivering excellent defect performance and greatly extended maintenance intervals. Applied’s superior PVD reactor technology can tailor the properties of each film layer for optimum device performance while the flexible architecture enables extendibility to emerging three-dimensional interconnect and packaging technologies.

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