From research technique to production line, fully automated GLAD at 200 mm

Glancing angle deposition (GLAD) is a versatile technique. By tilting a substrate to a shallow angle during evaporation and rotating it through a controlled profile, GLAD lets a film effectively mask itself as it grows. Ballistic shadowing concentrates deposition on the tips of existing nuclei, so columns tilt toward the source rather than filling in behind it. Adjust the tilt and rotation profile, and the same basic process yields vertical columns, zigzag structures, helical (spring-like) columns, or engineered hollow-core geometries.

That degree of control over microstructure — not just film thickness, but shape, orientation, and porosity — is why GLAD has been so widely studied for optical coatings, sensing layers, and other functional thin films. Engineering the microstructure of the thin film results in an additional tuning knob for the thin film properties.

What has kept GLAD largely confined to the lab is automation. The technique depends on precise, repeatable substrate motion during deposition, and translating that from a single research chamber to a production line means solving wafer handling, cleanroom compatibility, and throughput at the same time — without losing the process control that makes GLAD useful in the first place.

Polyteknik’s GLAD module runs on the Flextura platform as a single-wafer process module: an electrostatic chuck with backside gas cooling and edge protection, mounted on a stage that rotates (0–40 rpm) and tilts (0–180°) during deposition. Wafers move in and out via standard cassette-to-cassette loading through the Flextura Cluster platform’s cleanroom interface, and the process is CMOS-compatible, meaning it fits into existing cleanroom workflows.

Because the GLAD module is part of the standard Flextura platform, it isn’t a standalone tool —it integrates directly with the platform’s other process modules (sputtering, evaporation, epitaxial growth, degas, etch), so GLAD can be one step in a larger deposition sequence without breaking vacuum rather than a separate process island.

Most commercially available GLAD systems remain single-wafer research tools: precise, but built around manual or semi-manual substrate loading and lower throughput. Scaling that precision up to cassette-to-cassette, 200 mm wafer handling — while keeping the process fully automated and CMOS-compatible — has been the harder engineering challenge, and it is one that few vendors in the PVD equipment field have solved commercially.

Polyteknik’s GLAD module was developed and proven for exactly this: moving GLAD from proof-of-concept to production setup.

For teams working in photonics, optical coatings, or emerging areas like quantum and neuromorphic device fabrication, where engineered nanostructure geometry is increasingly part of the device design itself, that shift from lab curiosity to production-ready process is what determines whether GLAD is a technique they can actually build a product around.