AG Associates Introduces New Temperature Control System; Advanced RTP Equipment Meets 0.25-micron Technology Requirements.Sunnyvale, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 12, 1995--AG Associates (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on :AGAI), the leading supplier of advanced, single-wafer rapid thermal processing Rapid Thermal Processing (or RTP) refers to a semiconductor manufacturing process which heats silicon wafers to high temperatures (up to 1200 C or greater) on a timescale of several seconds or less. (RTP) equipment, today introduced its Direct Thermocouple Control (DTC DTC See: Depository Transfer Check DTC See: Depository Trust Company DTC See Depository Trust Company (DTC). ) system, which enables users to work with 0.25-micron architectures by providing enhanced temperature repeatability and reducing the sensitivity to production wafer-to-wafer emissivity changes. The DTC enables consistent temperature repeatability, allowing the Heatpulse 8108 RTP system to meet stringent process repeatability requirements necessary for users to migrate from 0.35-micron to tomorrow's 0.25-micron IC technology. The DTC system and software are now included as a standard feature of the Heatpulse 8108 RTP system, and are retrofittable to the product family's installed base. "At a time when diffusion furnaces approach their practical limits in VLSI and ULSI manufacturing processes, our flagship product, the Heatpulse 8108 RTP, sets new performance standards in thermal processes for a variety of applications. RTP is no longer limited by technical issues. AG Associates and its customers have made this a worldwide production technology," stated Dr. Arnon Gat, president and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of AG Associates. He added that the DTC considerably enhances the 8108's already outstanding dynamic control of heating zones. "Temperature gradients and fluctuations are eliminated, ensuring optimum temperature uniformity, resulting in higher customer device yields and improved productivity for today's-and tomorrow's-increasingly smaller geometries." AG's Heatpulse 8108 system combines the economic benefits of high net throughput and high system uptime with the performance parameters that matter most -- process uniformity and repeatability, slip-free processing, and contamination control. The system makes possible the exacting processes and applications critical to the production of advanced semiconductor devices, such as thin-gate dielectrics, storage dielectrics, and others. Applications in which Heatpulse has proven superior over furnace processing include ion implant annealing for both single- and polycrystalline silicon, silicide sil·i·cide n. A compound of silicon with another element or radical. Noun 1. silicide - any of various compounds of silicon with a more electropositive element or radical anneal To take the brittleness out of metal, plastic or certain carbon composites. Performed in the preparation of new products or in their restoration, annealing is accomplished via a heat treating process. , oxidation/nitridation, reflow, and contact alloying. The Heatpulse family is currently in use by companies like AT&T, Fujitsu, IBM, NEC (NEC Corporation, Tokyo, www.nec.com, www.necus.com) An electronics conglomerate known in the U.S. for its monitors. In Japan, it had the lion's share of the PC market until the late 1990s (see PC 98). NEC was founded in Tokyo in 1899 as Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. , Micron, Toshiba, TSMC, and others. AG Associates is a global growth company and the world's largest supplier of rapid thermal processors (RTP). The company offers process and demonstration services in Sunnyvale, California and Japan. AG Israel, an operation located in Migdal Haemek, designs and manufactures single-wafer integrated cluster tools and chemical vapor deposition Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is a chemical process used to produce high-purity, high-performance solid materials. The process is often used in the semiconductor industry to produce thin films. (CVD CVD Cardiovascular disease, see there ) modules, as well as cluster host platforms for integrated and sequential processing. Founded in 1981, AG Associates is traded on the NASDAQ National Market System under the symbol AGAI. CONTACT: AG Associates Cheri Salazar, 408/745-1790 or The Benjamin Group, Inc. Alexander Braun/Leigh Pesqueira, 408/559-6090 abraun@sv.tbgi.com |
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