SkyWater Announces Enhanced Capabilities with Multibeam’s First in Industry High Productivity Multicolumn E-Beam Lithography System

Positions SkyWater’s Minnesota fab with the most advanced 200 mm lithography  offering in the world

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. and Santa Clara, Calif. – July 25, 2024 – SkyWater Technology (NASDAQ: SKYT), the trusted technology realization partner, announced today that it has received from Multibeam Corp., a first-of-a-kind Multicolumn E-Beam Lithography (MEBL) system for volume production. The Multibeam (MB) platform is a landmark for the semiconductor industry, offering a high-throughput direct write patterning system that is orders of magnitude faster and more productive than conventional e-beam tools. The MB system will be available to SkyWater customers for early concept prototyping and rapid production.

MEBL enables several new production capabilities for SkyWater’s customers including secure chip ID for anti-counterfeit applications and full wafer patterning to support focal plane read-out ICs and other types of large format die. MEBL also offers large depth of focus for a range of high topology microfluidic and MEMS architectures, curvilinear designs for photonics, and high-density MOS. In addition, it is the only production lithography tool capable of sub 50 nm geometries on 200 mm wafers.

Uniquely configured with multiple miniaturized electron beam columns, the MB platform elevates E-Beam Lithography (EBL) to a breakthrough maskless lithography production system with compelling performance and cost advantages for today’s IC fabs. The delivery of the first Multibeam system follows a close collaboration with SkyWater over the past two years. This partnership provided critical fab operational insights which were used to define key system performance specifications before delivery of the MB platform to SkyWater.

According to Multibeam Chairman and CEO Dr. David K. Lam, “This is a significant milestone for Multibeam and we are immensely proud to share it with SkyWater. From the outset of our engagement with SkyWater they supported our mission to re-innovate EBL for high-volume production and provided critical user perspectives that helped us accelerate our development program and commercialize a world-class maskless lithography system. We are grateful for their collaboration and thrilled to place our first production tool in a SkyWater fab.”

SkyWater CEO and Director Thomas Sonderman emphasized the value of this technology for customers across target growth markets, “We are excited to offer new lithography capabilities to our customers enabled by Multibeam’s revolutionary technology. The deployment of the MB platform will expand capabilities and time to market for innovators on the concept-to-production journey in secure defense, biomedical, thermal imaging, high reliability and advanced compute markets.”

Sonderman added: “Our engagement with Multibeam exemplifies the power of partnerships in developing breakthrough equipment to accelerate chip innovation in the U.S. and positions SkyWater’s Minnesota fab with the most advanced 200 mm lithography in the world.”

SkyWater will enable access to the tool for initial customer designs in 4Q24.

About Multibeam  

Multibeam helps semiconductor leaders accelerate chip innovation with the industry’s first Multicolumn E-Beam Lithography (MEBL) system built for volume production. The technology enables applications like rapid prototyping, advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration, chip ID and traceability, high-mix quick-turn manufacturing, compound semiconductors, and more. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, the company is privately held and led by a team of semiconductor equipment and patterning technology experts. For more information, visit www.multibeamcorp.com.

About SkyWater Technology

SkyWater (NASDAQ: SKYT) is a U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturer and a DMEA-accredited Category 1A Trusted Supplier. SkyWater’s Technology as a Service model streamlines the path to production for customers with development services, volume production and heterogeneous integration solutions in its U.S. facilities. This pioneering model enables innovators to co-create the next wave of technology within diverse categories including mixed-signal CMOS, ROICs, rad-hard ICs, MEMS, superconducting ICs, photonics and advanced packaging. SkyWater serves the growing markets of aerospace & defense, automotive, biomedical, industrial and quantum computing. For more information, visit www.skywatertechnology.com/.