Mega, Kinetics Fluid Systems
State-of-the-Art Chemical and Slurry Delivery Equipment

"Our unmatched ability to customize slurry and chemical delivery systems for specific customer applications is our greatest strength,” begins Delton Hyatt, the President of Mega, Kinetics Fluid Systems. Blending and dispensing extremely challenging slurry mixtures requires nothing less than an expert to ensure low cost of ownership, short lead times, superior functionality, accessibility, and serviceability. Founded in 1990, Mega Fluid Systems sets the bar high for the semiconductor market by providing a variety of cost-competitive, State-of-the-Art chemical blending and slurry delivery equipment. The company not only provides leading-edge chemical, slurry, and slurry-blend delivery systems but also the supporting slurry filtration, metrology, and SCADA systems. Mega Fluid Systems offers world-class engineering, manufacturing and testing capabilities through a variety of solutions that employ a flexible modular architecture comprised of cabinetry, components, and tanks for supporting a spectrum of blending and throughput requirements.

As a fab’s total cost of ownership depends highly on the chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) tool’s reliability, and considering the high cost of the chemicals involved, minimizing any kind of waste, is paramount to the efficiency of the industry. In the event of a programmable logic controller (PLC) failure, there is an immediate shutdown of the distribution system. It not only stalls the manufacturing but also complicates processes for chemical and slurry delivery systems that supply customized blends to CMP and cleaning tools. Mega Fluid Systems addresses this with its MegaSafe control software, which is specifically designed to maintain global loop dispense to point-of-use CMP and cleaning tools. MegaSafe prevents fab disruption and reduces overall manufacturing cost by keeping track of tool status at shutdown and allowing for a seamless PLC swap to conserve the qualified slurry batches. The software returns the system operation to the step it was performing at the time of failure with “seamless transfer” when integrated into the hardware controls of a chemical or slurry delivery system. Moreover, it shortens reboot time and reduces fab wafer damage by the halted chemical flow.

The company’s state-of-the-art systems have gained major traction in the global market to seamlessly deliver the most difficult chemistries and sensitive slurries to their CMP tools and processes.

Our unmatched ability to customize slurry and chemical delivery systems for specific customer applications is our greatest strength

Recently, GlobalFoundries, an American semiconductor foundry was facing major issue of CMP slurry agglomeration, where the abrasive particles in the slurry club together and cause scratching on the wafer. Mega Fluid Systems successfully addressed the problem with a solution that monitors the flow and the pressure in the liquid/media throughout the entire distribution system. “We monitor the flow and the velocity because it is very important to keep the velocity between the laminar and turbulent flow. If the flow is too slow, the slurry comes out of the suspension and if it is too fast, the increasing shear rate will intensity the agglomeration problem in the slurries,” explains Hyatt. Mega Fluid’s solution not only significantly reduced the problem of scratching on the wafers but also increased GlobalFoundries’ overall yield in the factory.

Mega Fluid Systems is a renowned global supplier of high-performance chemical and slurry delivery equipment to the semiconductor, LED, pharmaceutical, specialty chemicals and solar/PV industries. Kinetic Systems, a full-service process and mechanical contractor for high-technology markets, acquired it in 2018. For the future, the company plans to provide effective augmented reality maintenance by incorporating Mircosoft HoloLens, an untethered mixed reality virtual reality (VR) headset, into their maintenance model. “We have subject matter experts that can’t be at every site and with HoloLens, communication, and collaboration become more effective as they can guide the on sight field tech in the background on various technical issues,” states Hyatt. The company is also going to incorporate new innovative filtration technologies in its units and aims to keep improving its product offering with customer feedback.