MEMS foundry acquires Intel cleanroom equipment

Rogue Valley Microdevices is already fully operational in a wide range of equipment in the 200mm (8") platform, and processes up to 10,000 wafers per month with substrate sizes from 2-8".

Rogue Valley Microdevices has a five-year plan to expand to a 50,000 square foot facility with a comprehensive set of 8 and 12" substrate process capabilities. The company is positioning itself as the leading MEMS foundry for biomedical and optical devices, as well as scientific prototyping applications.

Working with customers from North America, Europe and Asia, the company is currently primarily servicing R&D and pilot production projects. Typical customers are academic and national research laboratories, medium-sized fabless or “fab-light” companies and equipment manufacturers. According to Gomez, the medium-sized fabless, or “fab-light”, companies are Rogue Valley Microdevices’ most significant revenue source.

Rogue Valley Microdevices focuses on front-end MEMS processing such as thin-film deposition, photolithography and full device fabrication. The company also provides standard semiconductor processing such as metal etching and patterning but does not provide packaging or other back-end processes.

Jessica Gomez, founder and CEO, Rogue Valley Microdevices, comments: "Our preference is to build a new building and bring our newly acquired equipment to our main location in Medford, Oregon. We currently plan to stay focused on front-end fabrication services, and continue to build partnerships with back-end service providers."