Excelitas pairs 105 MP microscopy with SWIR wafer inspection

What does the wide-field microscope demonstrate?

At VISION 2026, Excelitas demonstrated a 105-megapixel wide-field wafer microscope that the company says resolves features below 1 µm across a large field of view.

The setup paired the Optem mag.x 125 high-resolution microscopy platform with the new pco.pixelfly 105 bi CLHS camera. A newly developed Optem mag.x 8x objective with a 0.32 numerical aperture relayed the image through the tube lens system to a 105-megapixel sensor with 2.74 µm pixels.

Arthur Stauder, Product Manager Imaging Optics at Excelitas, said: “These demonstrations show that our expertise today goes far beyond traditional industrial imaging. By combining advanced optics, microscopy, illumination, and imaging technologies, we can address increasingly demanding inspection challenges across the semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem.”

Excelitas says the mag.x 125 combines an optimized optical design with precision Köhler illumination to maintain contrast and image quality across the entire sensor area, including the outer edges of large-format sensors. Its integrated autofocus supplies the speed, accuracy and reliability required for automated metrology and inspection.

The pco.pixelfly 105 bi CLHS platform targets several large-area imaging markets:

• Semiconductor and wafer inspection, flat-panel display manufacturing and electronics production.
• Automated optical inspection, digital pathology, metrology and other large-area imaging tasks.

The VISION setup used an Excelitas X-Cite light source with dedicated optics to provide uniform, homogeneous illumination across the inspection area.

Excelitas also incorporated a WDI laser-based autofocus sensor. According to Stauder, it projects a laser signal through the objective and optical path onto the target and returns it to the sensor. The return signal controls the focus actuator in a high-speed closed loop, while continuous working-distance adjustment keeps a moving sample in focus.

Excelitas says this arrangement supports high-throughput inspection of wafers, flat panels and advanced packaging structures. The announcement supplied no numerical focus speed, positioning accuracy or sample cycle time for that claim.

Although the displayed configuration used an area-scan camera, Excelitas says the platform can also be adapted for line-scan imaging. The company reported great interest from trade visitors.

What can the SWIR system see?

The second demonstration centered on the pco.edge 1.3 SWIR CLHS camera and its 1,280 × 1,024-pixel InGaAs sensor. The sensor has a 10 µm pixel pitch; Excelitas specifies frame rates up to 148 fps and spectral sensitivity from the visible region through SWIR to 1,700 nm.

Excelitas says the camera combines ultra-low readout noise, high quantum efficiency, deep sensor cooling and high-speed image acquisition. Typical readout noise is 25 electrons, and sensor cooling reaches -30°C. The company says those characteristics support sensitive, low-noise imaging during longer exposures.

The stated applications include:

• Fluorescence microscopy, hyperspectral imaging and scientific imaging.
• Semiconductor inspection and advanced packaging analysis.

In the demonstration, an SWIR illumination source below the wafer transmitted light through the silicon substrate. Because silicon becomes transparent at SWIR wavelengths, this arrangement can reveal internal structures that remain hidden under conventional visible-light inspection. The method therefore relies on transmitted SWIR contrast from within the sample rather than only the surface image available to visible light.

Stauder said: “This enables the detection of internal defects and the visualisation of specific vertical interconnect structures. In simple terms, we make the invisible visible.”

The camera was paired with the new LINOS Rodagon SWIR objective, described by Stauder as Excelitas's first Rodagon lens designed specifically for SWIR. He said its design minimizes focus shift between near-infrared and SWIR wavelengths, enabling stable, repeatable measurements without refocusing.

The lens is apochromatically corrected from 900 nm to 1,750 nm. Although the optical correction extends beyond the camera's stated 1,700 nm response, the demonstrated sensor bandwidth still ends at 1,700 nm.

Excelitas previously showed a related hyperspectral-imaging concept at Photonics West using the Optem Fusion SWIR microscopy platform. Stauder said the technology can ultimately be tailored to virtually any backend semiconductor-packaging application, although the announcement did not define those configurations or qualify their performance.

What must buyers qualify before adoption?

Stauder said Excelitas has strengthened its position since the previous VISION exhibition, citing the company's long-standing work in optical inspection, machine-vision quality control and sorting. He said its latest microscopy, optical and SWIR products extend the company into automated microscopy, micro-inspection and imaging beyond the visible spectrum. Stauder characterized these developments as opening semiconductor opportunities and reinforcing Excelitas's position as a technology leader.

The announcement reported no independent measurements for sub-micron resolution, 25-electron noise, defect sensitivity, 148-fps performance or system throughput. It also gave no calibration interval, uncertainty budget, defect-detection rate or false-positive rate, and did not specify complete test conditions for the camera specifications.

The adoption question is whether semiconductor and display production lines can qualify each setup against their own defect thresholds, cycle times and calibration procedures before either demonstration becomes routine production inspection.