Northern Huachuang releases 12-inch GCIB etching equipment for applications such as silicon photonic chips and AR/VR

Recently, Northern Huachuang released the 12-inch gas cluster ion beam etching equipment Acme Glaion130, which is targeted at advanced logic, storage, advanced packaging, silicon photonic chips, AR/VR and other application fields.

According to reports, the equipment is mainly designed and optimized around gas cluster ion sources, high-speed moving electrode control and dynamic control algorithms. This includes etching path adjustment through in-situ film thickness measurement to improve local processing consistency of the wafer.

This equipment can be used for etching processing of advanced logic and memory chips, surface treatment and smoothing in advanced packaging, surface planarization of silicon photonic chips, and etching of AR/VR optical structures.

Among them, in the field of silicon photonic chips, this equipment can achieve atomic-level surface flatness, reduce light scattering losses, improve optical communication efficiency, and comprehensively help the silicon photonic chip industry to iteratively upgrade to high-end.

In the field of AR/VR, this equipment supports flexible adjustment of the ion beam incident angle, achieves high uniformity of grating etching and gradient depth etching, and helps upgrade the optical performance of AR/VR equipment.

It is worth mentioning that silicon photonic chips and AR/VR, as important application directions of cutting-edge technologies, are ushering in broad market opportunities:

According to estimates by TrendForce, the CPO penetration rate of optical communication modules used in AI data centers in 2026 is only about 0.5%. As silicon photonics and CPO packaging technologies become more sophisticated, cross-cabinet Scale-Up optical interconnect data transmission will begin to appear in the Rubin Ultra or Feynman generations at the earliest. As data transmission bandwidth continues to increase, TrendForce estimates that by around 2030, the penetration rate of Silicon Photonics CPO in AI data centers may reach 35%.

At the same time, the AR/VR market is also accelerating development. According to estimates from TrendForce, driven by major technology companies, global AR glasses shipments will jump to 950,000 units in 2026, with an annual growth rate of 53%.

Against the background of the development of related industries, the release of Northern Huachuang's Acme Glaion130 equipment is expected to provide better process solutions for high-potential applications such as silicon photonic chips and AR/VR.