Applied Shifts 200 mm Manufacturing, Refurbishing to Dedicated Line
David Lammers, News Editor -- Semiconductor International, 3/25/2008 10:12:00 AM
Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) has established a dedicated 200 mm manufacturing line at its Austin, Texas, manufacturing center to produce both new and refurbished 200 mm tools.
Curtis Vass, general manager of mature technology solutions (MTS) at Applied Global Services, said Applied earlier made all of its different products groups — including etch, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD) and others — on dedicated lines that included both 200 and 300 mm tools. Last summer, the company began shifting all 200 mm manufacturing to a dedicated 200 mm manufacturing operation in Austin under the management of Todd Campbell.
The shift involved remodeling Applied facilities and moving people around internally to form a dedicated 200 mm equipment manufacturing organization that Vass said “is really coming together now.”
“The goal is to gather together people with solid experience so Applied can meet the short lead-time requirements that customers have for high-quality 200 mm tools. The purpose is that both new and refurbished tools all get the same attention, the same processes, whether the tool is new or used. We did it for efficiency reasons to get the right economies of scale,” Vass said.
Applied does not publicly provide information about the value of its refurbished tool business. At a recent SEMI event on upgrading older fabs, participants sized the refurbished tool market at ~$2B. Vass said Applied has shipped ~1000 refurbished tools since it got into the business in 1995.
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| Demand for 200 mm wafers will remain steady for the next two years. (Source: Freescale Semiconductor Inc., based on data from Gartner Fab Database Q307, iSuppli Foundry Tracker Q1 07 Public Announcements, Strategy Projections, and the ITRS Roadmap) |
“There is a lot of interest,” Vass said, partly because of public announcements by logic and memory companies that plan to convert from 200 to 300 mm production. In those cases, Applied buys back its 200 mm equipment and refurbishes it, often upgrading the pollution abatement, heating and chilling systems before reselling the tool to other customers who, most often, are expanding 200 mm capacity.
Vass said other customers now see an opportunity to convert from 150 to 200 mm production for products such as power ICs, analog parts and MEMS devices. “For specific applications, in the past it was a little more cost-prohibitive if customers wanted to go to 8 in. A 6-in. line can be converted to 8 in. more easily than in the past,” he said.
New demand arises from the “More than Moore” integration technology, which often occurs at 200 mm. Others are buying 200 mm tools for new opportunities, such as the thick epitaxial deposition steps needed for the power ICs used in hybrid vehicles.
While the current perception is that China accounts for much of the demand for 200 mm tools, Vass said current demand for refurbished 200 mm tools is “evenly distributed around the world.”
The refurbished tool market is met both by the original equipment manufacturers, such as Applied, and a number of third-party vendors who refurbish various toolsets. While some tools continue to be made as new equipment, discontinued equipment, such as the Applied implant machines, are only sold as refurbished equipment.
Vass said Applied’s advantage is that “we own the whole piece from the beginning, so there are things we can do for the customers in terms of software, parts and configuration matching. There is a lot that we can do to meet the installed base’s operational requirements that takes the load off of the customer.”
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