Minimal Fab

About

Minimal fab is a unique Semiconductor Fabrication Solution developed in Japan by AIST (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science & Technology) led consortium joined by a lot semiconductor companies. Minimal fab realizes high-variety and low-volume semiconductor fab consisting of ultra small tools by half inch size wafers, which has never been dreamed of on the conventional fab.

The History

Fab lab research consortium was established in Japan to realize the Minimal Fab in the year 2010. The idea was to develop a facility for high mix low volume semiconductor devices in an ultra-short turnaround time (TAT). Minimal fab development association was established as a national project by 22 core companies 2012. Yokogawa established the Minimal Fab Application Laboratory in April 2016 at Musashino-city, Tokyo to accelerate development and PR activities of Minimal Fab system. In the year 2017 “Minimal Fab Promoting Organization”(MFPO) was established Accelerate commercialization.

AIST opened minimal fab in Tokyo Bay area for trial development by universities and companies in 2019.

Yokogawa Solution Service Corporation, Japan is one of prime member of Minimal Fab Promoting Organization and sole integrator and exclusive sales and service provider of Minimal Fab.

Advantages of Minimal Fab

  • Comfortably fits into the floor space of an ordinary office.
  • No clean rooms required.
  • Minimizes resource consumption.
  • Compact tools are ideally suited to low-volume semiconductor production.
  • Low investment as compared to Mega Fabs.
  • Ideally suited to high-mix low-volume production, multiproduct variable quantity production, and production of one-off products.
  • Minimal fab can be used to fabricate even a single chip. Unlike mega fab tools, which use large-diameter wafers and are not profitable unless they fabricate a large number of chips from a single wafer, minimal fab is optimized for low-volume production. While mega fab tools are built for production in high volumes, minimal fab meets the need for high-mix, low-volume production.

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  • Minimal Fab One-Stop Solution
  • Making Device Prototype
  • Yokogawa Minimal Fab Application Laboratory

    • Semiconductor Manufacturing Process for Minimal Fab