Within the DECOS project, PROFACTOR has developed a vibration control application for semiconductor production systems. The objective of PROFACTOR’s work within DECOS has been to find a solution to reduce vibrations of nano-imprinting devices through a mesh of piezo-electric sensor-actuator elements.
Nano-imprint technology is a new method for rapid pattern generation in the submicron range at reasonable cost. It uses polymer substrates to imprint a pattern created on a master stamp for a wide range of materials. Nano-imprinting has great potential for a variety of applications, from rapid prototyping and high volume production in the fields of bio-MEMS, to bio-fluidics, micro-optics and nano-technology in general.
Key challenges during nano-imprinting are process-induced deflections and vibrations. They make it impossible to realize large patterns on substrates up to industrial-relevant diameters of about 200 millimeters with the desired accuracy of only a few nanometers. In order to suppress vibrations and deflections of the master stamp in a nano-imprint machine, active structural control based on time-triggered distributed architecture and TTTech solutions have been successfully implemented.
The vibration control application of Profaktor is implemented on a distributed time-triggered system with four nodes. The nodes are based on the modular TTPPowerlink concept. Profaktor’s choice to use TTTech solutions has been driven by the high sensibility of the application domain.
