About TWI

For more than thirty five years TWI has been an innovation leader, first in HDD and then in the semiconductor industry. Based in Silicon Valley, we understand the major industry trends, and have devoted ourselves to customizing solutions to challenges facing our customers.

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About Us

As a small company with a long history, as well as its own research and development teams and experienced engineers, TWI is able to solve a wide range of high-value problems. To find out how we can provide innovative CMP solutions for your business, please contact one of our experts here.

Our History

Learn more about TWI’s many milestones and achievements over its twenty five year history.

The First Decade at TWI

  • 1981

    TWI is incorporated. We introduce our first cleanroom “low lint” materials, which have since become the industry standard.

  • 1982

    TWI developed a reduced chloride Sontara 8003 disk processing tape with DuPont.

  • 1983

    TWI begins working with Exclusive Design Company (EDC), our longtime partner, to develop a machine with the ability to polish and texture disks for storage devices. We created a textile tape that delivered a polishing or texturing slurry to the disk surfaces, ultimately selling them to most of the biggest hard disk drive manufacturers in the industry, including IBM, Komag and Akashic Memories.

  • 1985

    TWI introduces a tape for texturing rigid disks, a product that has become especially important as the industry switched to thin film coatings, which required applying a fine finishing polish to various film layers.

Our Transition to CMP

  • 1992

    TWI launches its innovative chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) program with its thin-film free abrasive texture tape.

  • 1994

    TWI introduces WestPad, a new product line aimed at CMP: a softer and more porous polishing pad that allowed more efficient use of slurry than the industry norm. We also introduced Zonal Texturing Tapes for thin-film media.

  • 1995

    TWI is invited to participate in a benchmark study of polishing pads for the use in tungsten CMP by SEMATECH, a research consortia of chipmakers partially federally funded. In that study, our pad outperformed industry standards. SEMATECH recognizes this achievement by awarding TWI a spot in another benchmark study. Our success leads to funding from six other research programs, and TWI rapidly gains market share in W CMP with our 813, and later our 711, pads, which continue to be used worldwide.

    In collaboration with EDC, TWI develops textile substrates for free abrasive texturing in the Thin-Film Rigid Disk Industry. This becomes the “tool of choice” for thin-film media texturing.

    TWI demonstrates its commitment to innovation by establishing its East Coast Materials Research Division.

  • 1996

    TWI continues to grow and innovate, establishing its CMP laboratory with the Strasbaugh 6EC CMP tool as a test bench.

  • 1997

    TWI opens a new $12-million pad and tape production facility and corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

    TWI’s 813 CMP pad is selected for IPEC/SEMATECH Gaard Tool Benchmark, and our pads are still used by IPEC for tool qualification

A Decade of Rapid Progress

  • 2000

    TWI turns its focus to the more specialized markets for polishing products and hires a team of veteran IC industry executives to ensure we continue to provide optimum service to our new customer base.

  • 2001

    TWI’s WS21 Tape becomes industry standard for LMR texturing.

  • 2002

    TWI’s business and quality system is certified to the ISO 9001 international quality system standard (TUV CERT# 02-1115). We have since been recertified in 2006 and 2009.

  • 2004

    TWI obtains a Global Window License from Applied Materials.

  • 2005

    TWI introduces microdenier nylon and poly tapes for advanced LMR texturing.

  • 2006

    TWI unveils its successful 312 pad for W, Cu, oxide and STI CMP applications. Our 312 pad continues to be used worldwide.

  • 2007

    TWI becomes the world’s largest supplier of CMP pads for tungsten CMP, in production on all major polishing equipment systems in Taiwan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Europe and the United States.

Recent Innovations: The PuRa product line

  • 2011

    TWI begins development on the second generation of Polyurethane CMP pads and its new, innovative PuRa product line. The PuRa line is designed for a uniquely stable process, using electroscopes to modulate the pads’ surface topography to meet each application’s unique performance needs.