Company News
Staff -- Semiconductor International, 1/1/2003
- Applied Materials (Santa Clara, Calif.) introduced a process excursion control (PEC) tool that gathers data from probe, metrology, defect detection and parametric sources, as well as tool-based sensor data for yield analysis.
- HPL Technologies (San Jose), which is still struggling with fraud allegations brought against it in July, reported a net loss of $6.9B for Q2 on revenues of $4.5B. Over the last quarter the company took an $800,000 restructuring charge and replaced the CEO and CFO.
- Veeco Instruments (Santa Barbara, Calif.) and FEI Co. (Beaverton, Ore.) were not able to complete their planned merger by Dec. 31, 2002, and either party has the right to terminate the agreement. No reason was given for the delay.
- Rudolph Technologies (Flanders, N.J.) entered the market for wafer defect detection as a result of the acquisition of ISOA Inc. (Richardson, Texas). The company introduced the WaferView automated defect inspection and classification tool for macro-inspection.
- Akrion (Allentown, Pa.) received multiple orders for its GAMA wet station from the North American business unit of a U.K.-based global systems company. With a combined worth of ;$6M, the automated wet stations will be installed at the company's facility in the eastern United States. The tools will be used for advanced front-end-of-line (FEOL) cleaning, resist stripping and nitride etching of 0.13 µm semiconductor devices.
- FSI International Inc. (Minneapolis) shipped an ANTARES CX advanced cleaning system to a leading semiconductor manufacturer in Japan for demonstration at its logic device fab. This is the first ANTARES CX to be installed in a Japanese production fab. It was selected for its ability to provide fab yield increase through defect removal at a number of insertion points.
