Applied Materials Positioned For Leadership in Supporting Chip Industry Movement to 300mm Technology
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 10, 1999--
Company's Extensive 300mm Equipment Development Enables
Industry to Improve Productivity and Performance with
Larger Wafers, Copper and 0.13 Micron Technologies
Applied Materials, Inc., the world's largest supplier of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, is well positioned to lead the industry in supplying the most advanced, high-productivity, 300mm wafer fabrication systems to customers as they transition to this new technology in their fabs. The company already has more than 60 distinct 300mm products specifically designed to support this transition.
"As a pioneer in the development of 300mm technologies, Applied
Materials is delighted by our customers' recent announcements of plans
to build 300mm fabs," said Dr. Dan Maydan, president of Applied
Materials. "We've clearly demonstrated that we are prepared to provide
them with the equipment needed to improve their productivity in
bringing more powerful, lower cost chips to consumers."
Applied Material's 300mm products encompass technologies for both
transistor level processing and the complex, multi-level interconnect
structures that are likely to use copper conducting materials and
new-generation dielectrics (insulators). For example, Applied
Materials recently announced the Electra(TM) family of copper-based
systems for barrier/seed layer deposition, copper electroplating and
copper CMP, all available for 300mm wafers. The company's EPIC
(Equipment and Process Integration Center) facility in Santa Clara,
California, will soon include a complete 300mm equipment set for
interconnect and front end process integration; many of these
technologies are already installed in the facility.
"We've worked closely with many customers for more than four
years to develop 300mm systems for all of our primary technologies.
All of our latest products have been designed with 300mm wafer
capability and with process technologies that are extendible to 0.13
micron device geometries and beyond. Applied Materials has already
shipped more than twenty 300mm systems to customers in the U.S.,
Europe, Japan, and Korea," noted Dr. Maydan.
In addition to processing more than 500,000 wafers during its
product development activities, the company has processed tens of
thousands of 300mm wafers for customer and consortia services over the
past two years.
Applied Materials has been shipping 300mm systems to customers
for more than two years, including multiple systems to SC300, the
Infineon (Siemens)/Motorola 300mm production fab in Dresden, Germany,
where the systems have been operating at high levels of reliability
and productivity. These systems include plasma etch, chemical vapor
deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD) and high temperature
film products, as well as state-of-the-art wafer inspection and CD-SEM
equipment.
The 300mm transition provides chipmakers with the ability to
produce semiconductor devices with more advanced performance, yet at
lower overall cost. To meet this challenge, Applied Materials' latest
generation of 300mm systems focuses on maximizing process technology
and productivity to handle rapidly shrinking geometries and new
materials, such as copper and low k dielectrics. These systems are
specifically designed to increase output and reduce net operating cost
in order to achieve customer goals of die cost reduction of 30 percent
or better per unit area as compared to manufacturing on 200mm wafers.
Applied Materials, Inc. is a Fortune 500 global growth company
and the world's largest supplier of wafer fabrication systems and
services to the global semiconductor industry. Applied Materials is
traded on the Nasdaq National Market System under the symbol "AMAT."
Applied Materials' web site is www.appliedmaterials.com.
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CONTACT: Applied Materials, Inc.
Betty Newboe, 408/563-0647 (technology media)
Carolyn Schwartz, 408/748-5227 (financial community)
Jeff Lettes, 408/563-5161 (business media)
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