ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands – September 19, 2023. Nearfield Instruments, the industry leader in high-throughput, non-destructive metrology & inspection solutions for the semiconductor manufacturing industry, is pleased to announce that ING Corporate Investments has come onboard as a new investor. Joining ING in this funding round are existing investors Invest-NL, Innovation Industries and TNO, bringing the total investment to EUR 27 million.

CEO Hamed Sadeghian: “We are very pleased to welcome ING Corporate Investments. Their commitment and expertise, together with that of our existing shareholders, enables Nearfield Instruments to further expand our product portfolio, world-wide customer support and production capacity. The customer demand for our existing surface metrology product QUADRA is high as it is for our recently announced non-destructive subsurface metrology solution AUDIRA. With the support of our shareholders we can continue our strong market growth.”

Pieter Bosman, Managing Director ING Corporate Investments, comments: “Nearfield Instruments has shown the potential to grow into another world player, in an already strong Dutch ecosystem of semiconductor equipment suppliers. With this investment we can help the company in this crucial scaling phase”.

René Brama, Senior Investment Manager at Invest-NL, adds: “Our enthusiasm for the unique technology and the team at Nearfield Instruments remains unwaivering. The participation of ING Corporate Investments strengthens the confidence in the future of this innovative company.” 

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AUDIRA will complement current metrology techniques by providing highly accurate and non-destructive nanometer-level measurements through opaque layers of advanced leading-edge node devices

ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands – July 10, 2023 – Nearfield Instruments B.V., a provider of ground-breaking process control metrology solutions for advanced semiconductor devices, today launched AUDIRA™ – the industry’s first and only in-line, non-destructive subsurface metrology system for advanced semiconductor manufacturing. The AUDIRA system provides highly accurate and reproducible nanometer-level measurements of buried features and defects, such as voids, in advanced memory and logic devices.

“AUDIRA is a game-changer for advanced semiconductor manufacturing. It provides measurement data that was previously not available without having to remove the wafer from the line,” said Hamed Sadeghian, CEO, Nearfield Instruments. “Most importantly, the AUDIRA gives process engineers insight into the wafer’s innermost layers – details they never were able to measure before nondestructively and sometimes would never have even known to look for. AUDIRA, like our first product QUADRA™, turns in-line metrology and inspection into an added value in the semiconductor manufacturing process.”

Nearfield Instruments anticipates that AUDIRA will complement transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and critical dimension-scanning electron microscopy (CD-SEM) for subsurface process control measurements. AUDIRA uses an acoustic approach that is fast, very precise and non-destructive with the added advantages of being in-line with a fast turn-around time.

With AUDIRA, Nearfield Instruments combines an acoustic microscopy technique with its own proprietary atomic force microscopy (AFM) technology. The AFM probe is used to ‘listen’ to the sound waves coming through the wafer layers. The wave interacts with all the transitions and surfaces within the device and reflects information back. The pattern of that reflected wave and the time of arrival contains data about the structure below the surface. The AUDIRA scans across the die, with each step as small as several tenths of a nanometer. The data is then translated into a comprehensive pattern of the underlying layers that provides measurement of subsurface features.

AUDIRA is also valuable for measuring shallow features through the surface. Using the AFM probe, surface elasticity variations can be quickly measured to reveal details about the structure below. Nearfield Instruments works with customers to develop a recipe for when to use acoustics and at what frequency, for which layers local elasticity measurements are best, and when to switch to wave propagation schemes.

Nearfield Instruments’ product portfolio also includes the QUADRA™ surface metrology solution. It features a groundbreaking multi-miniaturized AFM head architecture combined with feedforward trajectory planner (FFTP) imaging technology to enable on-device, non-destructive measurements for in-line process monitoring of very high-aspect ratio structures as well as hybrid bonding and EUV resist critical dimension metrology. QUADRA has shown a factor of more than 100x improvement in imaging acquisition time when benchmarked against existing state-of-the-art AFM systems.

AUDIRA is available for ordering now and the first systems will ship in Q2 2024 to top semiconductor fabs worldwide.

Nearfield Instruments is taking measures to strengthen the European semiconductor postion

Semiconductors are at the centre of strong geostrategic interests, and of the global technological race. For this reason, the European Commission proposed the European Chips Act, which strengthens European competitiveness and resilience in this strategic sector.

https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/european-chips-act_en

The EU Chips Act will bolster Europe’s competitiveness and resilience in semiconductor technologies and applications. It will do this by strengthening Europe’s technological leadership in the field.

To do so the Commission has approved an Important Project of Common European Interest (‘IPCEI’) to support research, innovation and the first industrial deployment of microelectronics and communication technologies across the value chain. The project, called “IPCEI ME/CT”, was jointly prepared and notified by fourteen Member States: Austria, Czechia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Spain.

See https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_3087

Nearfield Instruments is proud that the Dutch and European governments recognize the technological leadership we bring with our metrology and inspection solutions to advanced semiconductor manufacturing. By participating in IPCEI ME/CT we will contribute, with all our innovative power and in cooperation with our partners, to strengthening the European position in the world-wide semiconductor sector, by ensuring the capacity to produce semiconductors here within the EU.

If you want to read more about ‘the most innovative company you have never heard of’, please read (in Dutch) this interesting article by Het Financieele Dagblad:

https://fd.nl/bedrijfsleven/1472114/onbekend-nearfield-sleept-als-enige-mkb-er-in-nederland-bijzondere-chipsubsidie-binnen

Nearfield Instruments B.V. (NFI) is pleased to announce that Eric Meurice is appointed as Chair of the Supervisory Board of NFI as of March 15st, 2023. “We extend a warm welcome to Eric Meurice,” said CEO Hamed Sadeghian. “He brings with him an enormous amount of experience and expertise from the semiconductor industry.” Eric Meurice added: “I am very honoured to have been asked to join and I look forward to working with this very talented group and contributing to its success”

With over 150 employees, Nearfield Instruments B.V. delivers in-line process control solutions to the semiconductor manufacturing industry based on their ground-breaking non-destructive, high-throughput 3D Atomic Force Microscopy technology. NFI is headquartered in Rotterdam, NL and has offices in Eindhoven and Hwaseong, Korea.