Replacing lenses with algorithms, Eindhoven-based AIM Solutions believes it can fill an important gap between today’s optical and scanning-probe semiconductor metrology tools. The startup eyes advanced packaging as its first target market.
When Yifeng Shao signed the incorporation papers for AIM Solutions in June 2024, he suddenly found himself in unfamiliar territory. “You walk out the door and you have a company,” he recalls. “But I didn’t really know what to do. I had never run a company before.” Two years later, the startup occupies its own lab at Eindhoven’s High Tech Campus, employs twelve people with more joining soon and has built the first prototypes of a technology that originated in academic research but is now being engineered into an industrial metrology platform.
AIM Solutions is a spin-off from Delft University of Technology, which spearheaded the Linx project, an NWO-funded consortium of five universities, TNO and several companies (including ASML). The goal was to investigate lensless imaging of nanostructures using EUV light. The project culminated in a Nature cover publication demonstrating that computational techniques could reconstruct highly detailed images from diffraction patterns rather than conventional optical images. While the academic work focused on proving the concept with extreme ultraviolet light, Shao saw commercial potential in wavelength-agnostic topography measurement.
This article is exclusively available to premium members of Bits&Chips. Already a premium member? Please log in. Not yet a premium member? Become one for just €20 for the first year and enjoy all the benefits.
