Why this approach to Reticle Storage?

Reticle storage is required of every semiconductor FAB worldwide. Solutions range from inexpensive library shelves on up to multimillion dollar fully automated bare reticle stockers. We believe the market for reticle storage can be loosely segmented into 3 sectors:
• High End - Advanced automated systems for handling bare reticles
• Mid Range – Semi-automated systems for storing boxed reticles
• Low End – Simple racks, drawers, shelves, cabinets, etc.

High End: These reticle stockers are priced upwards of $1M/Unit, or roughly $900 per reticle stored. The High End market is dominated by a small set of established suppliers. High End reticle stockers are complicated, and quite expensive to develop, manufacture, and support. Most legacy FABs choose not to purchase High End reticle stockers. For these reasons, the High End market is not the best point of entry for company.

Low End: The low end market is essentially a commodity market of common shelves, racks, drawers, and cabinets. Any local machine shop with a decent set of drawings can build these products. The low price benefit is diminished by the high square footage of cleanroom space required. For these reasons, the Low End sector is not our best business target.

Mid-Range: There currently exists a small Mid Range market. These are automated tools used primarily for storing reticles that are in their protective boxes. We believe most legacy FABs prefer this category, or would like to upgrade into this catagory.

A successful product in this Mid Range market has been the Dynamic Micro Systems M1900, or the older M1500 version. This solution has enjoyed good market acceptance, and as such is a meaningful benchmark for any new product offering. Until now, the Mid Range tools were typically priced at roughly $250 per box. Our Mid Range automated solution will be substantially less, with a capital cost target of ~$40 box.

We believe the critical metric will certainly be ‘price per box stored’ defined as ‘capital acquisition cost’ divided by ‘system capacity’. At the end of the day, capital acquisition cost will be the deciding factor. Otherwise, every FAB would already own really sweet high end, space saving, bare reticle stockers at >$1,000/mask.

 

The target demographic will be existing FABs, all of which have some version of reticle storage already in place. As such, any new solution will have to complement the FAB’s existing protocol and come on-line with minimal disruption to “how things are done now”. Therefore, it is essential to offer a product that can integrate to existing FAB protocols. This often means host friendly connectivity with industry standard SECs/GEM.

The new system should also be able to operate completely independent of any existing FAB protocol, for those desiring an independent solution. For this reason, it should be possible to buy a new reticle storage system that will not require a Retcile Manager.

Offering an optional PC based Reticle Manager is, however, recommended because it will add organizational value and help buyers understand our stocker's functionality and intent.

Our proposed new product is simply a series of automated storage racks that move on rails. At the press of a button, an operator can open an access aisle to retrieve or return their reticle boxes. A bar code system is used for tracking.

Background: The concept of shelves moving on rails exists in other industries. However, there is no commercially available moving shelf solution made for reticles. It may be possible to buy an industrial solution and attempt to modify it. However, our research suggests it would be cheaper and better to simply borrow the idea and create a custom solution made specifically for the semiconductor industry.

Reticle storage systems must have specific custom features required by FABs. It will be necessary to deliver cleanroom compatibility, host integration, S2/CE safety, custom racks (for space efficiency), allowance for laminar flow, low particle design, FAB accepted materials of construction, ESD control, ‘tool down’ access to reticles, and a semiconductor industry integration scheme. SECs/GEM capability will certainly be high on the list of some buyers. From a competitive standpoint, the new product should offer optional indicator lighting for those interested.

Given the very small and highly specialized reticle storage market, industrial manufacturers will have little or no interest in chasing the specialized market. A suitable system will therefore need to be designed in part or in total. This is best done by a supplier with semiconductor background. FABs will want that assurance and they will also prefer that one supplier take ownership and total responsibility for the entire system, including hardware, software, particle guarantees, reliability, and long term support.

Our new reticle storage system provides all the features and benefits of the benchmark. It will also have the following compelling advantages over the benchmarked legacy Mid Range reticle stockers: