The KLA Instruments™ group within KLA Corporation encompasses a comprehensive and growing portfolio of benchtop and automated surface metrology and defect inspection solutions that address a wide range of academic and industrial applications.  

Here are some of the advantages to choosing KLA Instruments as your partner in surface metrology research.

Fast Response Time

True to KLA’s commitment to customer success, the Instruments group collaborates intimately with customers to understand their unique requirements and innovates to deliver solutions that meet the highest standards in measurement technology.

KLA Instruments Business Development Manager Menno Bouman describes how the team approaches problem solving for customers and what sets KLA Instruments apart from its competitors: its unparalleled customer support, most notably in its fast response time to customers’ queries.

Access to expert applications engineers in a matter of minutes, no matter where customers are located around the world, is provided five days a week, 24 hours a day. Initially pioneered by the Filmetrics^® group, this level of support is now standard for all KLA Instruments benchtop surface metrology customers.

A Long History of First-to-Market Technology

Rooted in a deep history of innovation, the state-of-the-art measurement technology and intuitive software is designed to help engineers and scientists address their toughest measurement challenges. We do this by ensuring our tools continue to deliver consistent, reliable, and precise data, as well as breakthrough solutions that enable our customers to make advancements in their respective fields.

Our first benchtop surface profiler tool, the Alpha-Step^® 100, became a critical quality control tool in almost every semiconductor fabrication facility. In addition, the first commercially available nanoindenter, the Nano I system, was released by the inventors of nanoscale material mechanical testing technology, Dr. Warren Oliver and Sir John Pethica. Today, Dr. Warren Oliver continues to contribute from our Tennessee location, helping KLA Instruments advance the field of nanomechanical testing – targeting film flexibility testing, strength measurement and failure analysis of materials used in the semiconductor, display, and hard-disk industries.

Other examples of our industry-first innovation include our Tencor™ stylus profiler tool line, which also boasts several industry-first innovations, with rock-solid stability, unbeatable sensitivity and repeatability in measurements and the Filmetrics^® F20 tools, introduced to market as the world’s first compact, and easy-to-use benchtop thin-film measurement systems.

To learn more about our detailed innovation history, review this timeline of our award-winning, industry-first tool lines.

Advancing Humanity Through Education

As a KLA core value, being indispensable to customers is embodied by Menno Bouman and our team of application engineers through continuous education in the growing field of surface metrology. Our outreach program, known as iUniversity, holds regular webinars and multilingual technical talks to share technical expertise and know-how gained from our 40 years of experience in the industry. The iUniversity program provides solutions to some of our customers’ toughest challenges, ensuring their continued education, opportunities and success.

We also encourage our customers and application engineers to periodically share their knowledge through application notes and technical papers. Our growing technical literature database aims to delve deeper into applications and tool capabilities by studying a wide variety of material.

Learn more about KLA Instruments solutions by visiting our website at www.kla.com/products/instruments or contact us by email at instruments@kla.com.