On the litho floor, a soft bake that drifts even 0.2°C is enough to shove critical dimension bias and puff up line-edge roughness—and suddenly you’re scrapping a whole lot. The bake isn’t just a warm-up. It’s the thermal budget that locks in the photoresist profile before exposure. That’s the reality we built our photoresist bake heaters for: temperature uniformity and repeatability that matter down to the nanometer, not just the degrees.
What actually matters, technically
We hold wafer-level uniformity within ±0.1°C across the bake surface, so soft bake and hard bake profiles stay stable, lot after lot. The design is cleanroom-ready for Class 1–100, using low-outgassing materials and a surface finish that keeps particle generation as close to zero as you can get. Ramp control is repeatable, so the same recipe gives you the same resist behavior every time. We built it for 24/7 fab life—components rated for high-cycle thermal stress, and a hot zone that survives repeated wet cleans without losing calibration.
Why it holds up in production
In high-volume fabs, that kind of precision cuts excursions caused by bake variance, lowers scrap, and shortens qualification cycles. The process window opens up because the resist sees the same thermal history consistently—CD control tightens, and you spend less time reworking. Energy use stays in check thanks to efficient heating and tight thermal containment, and service intervals stretch because the hot zone is built to live in the process, not just on paper.
What you need to plan for
These heaters drop straight into existing bake tracks, but the mounting and thermal interface have to match the tool’s tolerances. Expect a tight alignment window during install to hit the spec on uniformity, and plan regular calibration checks if the chamber sees frequent solvent exposure. Matched to the right process, you get stable bakes with minimal unplanned downtime.