Samsung-Backed Wooptix to Supply Wafer Metrology Equipment in South Korea

What happened

Spanish semiconductor metrology equipment maker Wooptix plans to supply its Phemet wafer metrology system to a South Korean semiconductor manufacturer; the customer's identity was not disclosed. Marco Franchi, technical marketing manager at Wooptix, said the company will begin deploying equipment at customer sites next year to validate its suitability for their processes, with the goal of entering mass-production lines within two to three years. Samsung Ventures led an investment in the company last year. Phemet is an automated metrology system that measures the shape of 300-millimeter wafers, including bow and warpage; it captures an image of an entire wafer in less than one second and offers subnanometer height measurement resolution. The system illuminates the wafer with LEDs and calculates its surface profile from phase differences in reflected light, using technology Wooptix calls Wavefront Phase Imaging (WFPI). The company unveiled Phemet in November 2025 and installed its first system at French semiconductor research institute CEA-Leti in May. Wooptix plans to secure logic semiconductor customers in Korea before expanding into memory, because wafer alignment and shape control have become more challenging with gate-all-around (GAA) transistors and backside power delivery network (BSPDN) processes; it subsequently plans to expand into advanced packaging applications including hybrid bonding and is considering miniaturizing the equipment for die-to-wafer (D2W) and die-to-die (D2D) processes. Founded in 2016, Wooptix raised more than 10 million euros in a Series C funding round in February 2025, jointly led by Samsung Ventures and the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT), with participation from existing investors including Intel Capital and Tokyo Electron (TEL) Venture Capital. Wooptix is headquartered in Tenerife, Spain, where it also operates manufacturing facilities, and maintains offices in Madrid and Grenoble, France; about 60% to 70% of its approximately 80 employees work in R&D, and the company plans to expand its workforce to around 100 by the end of this year or early next year.

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Source: The Elec · 10/26/2026 · View original source