VLSI Standards designs and manufactures an extensive array of products to assist you with your calibration efforts. Our products typically come in the form of standards and references. The primary difference between a standard and a reference is that standards have direct traceability to a higher authority; whereas references do not - often because no official standard exists. Each type of product is made to a rigorous set of internal specifications and serves as an excellent calibration artifact. With the preliferation of national and international quality standards such as ISO 9000, TS16949, and the APLAC MRA, a company can have a wide spectrum of mandated measurement protocols specifying regular calibrations that require standards that are traceable to a national authority. An effective calibration program will typically use a combination of traceable standards and references, with the reference serving as a daily monitor and the standard used at scheduled intervals or when absolute accuracy is required. Contamination Products VLSI Standards' line of contamination products are used with Surface Particle Counters or Scanning Surface Inspection Systems (SSIS). Contamination products can be used to calibrate an instrument for a particular particle size (with Absolute Contamination Standards) or a particular size of sphere on a blanket film (Calibration Curves) or reticle/pellicle (with Reticle Contamination Standard). Other specially developed contamination products provide recleanable surfaces, scanner diagnostics capability, and a method for calibrating mask and pellicle inspection systems. Contamination products can be used to calibrate an instrument for a particular particle size. Dimensional Products Profilometry Over our history, VLSI Standards has shipped thousands of Step Height Standards. These versatile profiling standards are useful in any application that requires characterizing a vertical height. They are in use at paper, plastics, and paint companies and data storage industries, and are widely established in the semiconductor industry. Step Height Standards consist of an etched pattern in a quartz substrate and are usually used to calibrate optical or stylus based profilometers. Profilometry products can be used to calibrate instruments for height. Surface Topography Products Surface Topography Standards and References, which may be used to characterize and calibrate scanning probe microscopes, provide for X, Y and Z dimensional calibration. These standards also provide valuable information about sample alignment as well as probe tip integrity and condition. Surface Topography Standards and References provide x, y and z dimensional calibration. Solar Energy Products The Solar Energy family of products and services are used to calibrate and monitor critical processes found in the Photovoltaic Industry. There are Solar Reference Cells for calibrating Solar Simulators. Solar Reference Cell Certification services to allow users to maintain their traceability and quality system compliance. Advanced Lithography Products VLSI Standards provides a complete offering of NIST Traceable Advanced Lithography products for users of CD-SEM and CD-AFM. Nanolattice Pitch Standards are used to calibrate and monitor the magnification performance of CD-SEMs. The NanoCD product line may be used by CD-AFM users to check tip accuracy and by CD-SEM users to monitor CD measurement accuracy. NanoCD Standards assist users in monitoring CD measurement accuracy. Film Thickness Standards The Film Thickness Standards are designed to calibrate various optical thickness measurement instruments. They consist of silicon wafers with a pattern of uniform, thermally grown silicon dioxide, deposited silicon nitride, or tungsten on the surface. Electrical Products VLSI Standards has developed several different products suitable for calibrating both non contact and contact resistivity and sheet resistance measuring devices. These products have calibrated values for resistivity and sheet resistance. Additional Products and Services In addition to the range of products summarized above, VLSI Standards also provides a Custom Deposition Service for depositing polystyrene latex (PSL) spheres on customer-supplied substrates and a Custom Film Thickness Measurement Service. Please contact a sales representative for any information concerning custom products. We also work with equipment or instrument suppliers to design and develop standards or references which are specific to their equipment or application. Some products are mounted on custom assemblies which allow the instrument to be continuously referencing a standard during its operation. Other products are entirely custom designed via a partnership between VLSI Standards and your business.