Dr. Ivan Orlov, CEO of Scientific Visual SA, Switzerland, presented lecture titled
”Taking guesswork out of sapphire production: from defect detection to better yield”
at CIEO exhibition in Shenzhen, China.
A typical production team has to make a lot of guesses to find the crystallisation parameters which increase production yield and decrease defects.
While the defects themselves carry considerable information about the production issues, with current inspection methods most of this information is discovered too late in the production cycle: after coring, wafering, grinding and polishing to final product.
The presentation showed how to close this feedback loop, and use automated defect detection to improve the production yield.
It demonstrated:
- Objective (observer independent) measurement of defect size and morphology at the boule and core level
- What information we could extract from the automated quality control
- Unveiling long-term trends in sapphire quality by collecting defect data over time
- Linking sapphire defects with specific events and parameters in the crystallisation process.
The event was part of the 2nd International Forum on Sapphire Market & Technologies organised by Yole & CIEO. Full agenda of the Forum is available at: https://www.i-micronews.com/agenda-sapphire-2016.html