Valley Design is an ISO 9002 manufacturer of stock and custom substrates, windows, wafers, semiconductor wafer chucks, flat optics, beamsplitters, polarizers, glass rods and spacers, solar cells, lenses, wedges, waveguides, subassemblies and other components. For nearly 30 years, Valley has been a leader in precision materials processing, offering lapping, polishing, dicing, thinning, wafering, grinding and shaping services.

The company works with both stocked and customer supplied materials, and particularly specializes in ultra-thin (as thin as 12.5um), ultra-flat (1/10 wave), super-polishing and tight tolerances . Other capabilities include:

• Metals lapping and polishing
• Optical edge polishing with chips < 1um
• Lapping up to 48"
• Dicing as small as .005" sq.
• Parallelism to .1um
• TTV (Total Thickness Variation) < 1um
• Routinely processing parts up to 300mm diameter
• Precision machining
• Ultra sonic hole drilling
• Low kerf wafering

Valley has enjoyed extensive experience with a wide variety of materials, and is willing to work with proprietary materials as well. Materials such as Fused Silica, Quartz, Optical Glasses, Pyrex, Sapphire, Aluminum Nitride, Germanium, Ceramics, Borosilicates, Silicon, Crystals and Metals are routinely processed. Exotics such as Luag, Plastic Polymers, Titanium, InP, Tantalates, Fluorides, crystals, metal alloys, glass ceramics, and others are lapped, polished and diced by Valley Design. 

History

Valley Design was incorporated in 1975, with the mission of developing and designing unique manufacturing processes of materials shaping of Ceramics, Silicon, Germanium, Glass and Quartz for the semiconductor and hybrid circuit industries. Facilities initially opened in Merrimac Valley, Massachusetts and later moved to Nashoba Valley, Massachusetts. In addition, in 2000, West coast facilities were opened in the Silicon Valley area (Santa Cruz, California). Initially, the company set up capabilities in ID cutting and wafering of non-semiconductor materials. Working with Intel, Hewlett Packard and Owens, further developments included fused silica windows for e-proms, lapping and polishing of Macor and Boron substrates. Silicon and Germanium backlapping and polishing were also offered employing traditional techniques. Later, new process developments involving Alumina substrate polishing for thin film hybrid circuit applications led to expertise in ultra-thin optical materials processing. In 1978, the first ultra-thin project was successfully completed for IBM: Fused Silica wafers 6" diameter x 25um thick, optically polished both sides. During the early 1980's, Valley began offering non-Silicon wafers to SEMI standards.

Over the next 20 years, the company continued to expand and build upon the knowledge gained from its ever increasing body of experience. Valley collaborated on projects for multiple industries including semiconductor, medical, aerospace, communications, optoelectronics, photonics and also became an important resource for research projects conducted around the world. Today, Valley Design offers a unique value to its customers with the ability to process materials of all types to some of the most exacting specifications, and has established a reputation worldwide for excellence in quality, service, R&D and state-of-the-art lapping, polishing and dicing capabilities.