Can you introduce your company?
Riber is a company specialized in the field of instrumentation. Designs, manufactures and markets machines called MBE (molecular beam epitaxy), for molecular beam epitaxy. This advanced technology It is intended for the semiconductor alloy industry. It is a niche activity, useful for researchbut also essential for the proper functioning of our everyday objects that use information technology. In fact, this method is at the origin of certain components inside our mobile phone or our video game console (among others).
Since the 1980s, our machines have been used primarily in the context of research carried out to create radio frequency power amplifiersthat gave rise to telecommunications networks by electromagnetic waves and lasers for fiber optic communication networks.
As the work of researchers in laboratories has evolved, our technology has evolved to cover more and more semiconductor alloy domains. That is why the 90’s marked the commercialization of our first production machines dedicated to the amplifiers present in mobile phones.
How does this technology work?
The materials we use are very sensitive to oxygen and carbon, two molecules present in the air. To avoid this sensitivity, we evaporate them under “high vacuum”. Our machines thus act like large pressure cookers: we eliminate all the gas present in the air, up to pressures of up to one hundred billionths of atmospheric pressure. The vacuum we create is therefore as pure as that of outer space..
Inside each machine there is a previously chosen substrate (a single crystal). It is in this purified environment that we grow semiconductor crystals. by evaporation of simple elements (gallium, aluminum, indium, arsenic, etc.), which will be deposited layer of atoms by layer of atoms to form a new crystal. This new single crystal is created with layers of different thickness and composition. Depending on the form that this deposit structure is given, it can give rise to a microwave emitter, a detector or a laser.
How will your know-how evolve?
Our industry is booming! The Chinese market currently represents the largest percentage of our sales. Indeed, he is fond of our machines, since the country is massively equipping itself with fiber optic networks and telecommunication objects. In the longer term, Riber intends putting its know-how at the service of microprocessors (and thus enter more widely into the silicon industry, which creates the objects in information technology).
Currently, information from microprocessors is communicated through electrical currents. However, to improve their performance, manufacturers plan to communicate using light waves. To do this, lasers and laser receivers are needed: your materials are precision engineered on our machines. So this is a completely new development path for Riber.
At the same time, we want to find new sources of growth outside the Chinese market. We are already working on an R&D program to improve the performance of our machines, add AI to them and thus open our skills to the materials and markets of tomorrow. Lastly, as Riber is close to the world of research, we care about what work is done with our machines, and how it can be applied to industry. This allows us to anticipate the needs of our industrial customers.
Who are your customers?
The fields of application are numerous. Riber is mainly aimed at best universities in the world (French University, Harvard, MIT — Massachusetts Institute of Technology —the big Asian campuses) and research laboratories. Thanks to our machines, researchers can, in particular, invent new alloys and new forms of crystals, grow rods with which small lasers are designed, enclose electrons or photons in a box… So much advanced research, aimed at applications of the future.
In addition, applied research wishes to develop new electronic components. Therefore, we hope that its future materials will be based on those of our sector. The Riber company is also poised to offer ever-increasing performance machines (both in terms of speed, power and signal capture). We have already shown that we are capable of meeting the most complex needs of new technologies : the single crystals of the James-Webb Space Telescope were made by Riber machines.
Second, our machines find their interest in the production. Our clients are also companies that manufacture these monocrystals and supply them to other companies for the manufacture of electronic components (found in 5G, terrestrial telecommunications, satellites, mobile telephony, etc.). As we said before, our semiconductor alloys apply to fiber optic networkslike sensors of all kinds (infrared, satellite or terrestrial detection, etc.).
According to you, what are the challenges that await you?
The biggest challenge ahead of us is to allow Riber make a transition between the machines currently designed and those to come for the silicon industry, which have since design rules different from ours. This path is clearly a turning point that we wish to take. For this, we still have to develop the technical means, in order to carry out the deposition of the necessary oxide layers. An essential element to make the interface between the silicon substrate and the photonic part. We must also determine what will be the means that will allow us to evaporate the materials, and then control their thickness and composition.
This content was produced with SCRIBEO. The BFMBUSINESS editorial team was not involved in the production of this content.
Source: BFM TV
