Oxford, MA -- IPG Photonics has installed a new Veeco GEN2000 Edge molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) system to expand production of GaAs-based lasers. It is IPG's fourth such system; the company bought its first Veeco MBE tool in 2006 and added two more in 2007.
Citing those existing systems' cost-of-ownership and performance, IPG's Alex Ovtchinnikov, VP for components, noted that it made sense for the company to scale up to a higher-capacity version to accommodate its needs for increased throughput.
The GEN2000 Edge MBE system enables 7×6-in. epiwafer growth of devices such as pump lasers, vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), and heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs). Its cluster-tool architecture minimizes cleanroom space and downtime attributed to maintenance, resulting in increased throughput, and allows for growth of different materials in connected modules.
IPG's business for laser diodes continues to boom. Demand had been "threefold our capacity" over the past couple of years, though the company is bringing on enough capacity now to handle it, noted IPG execs during the 2Q12 financial results call.
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