On the cutting edge of high tech.

Greg Campbell's Plasma Materials & Technology creates equipment that make chips smaller and faster

As David slew Goliath, so Greg Campbell, founder and president of Chatsworth-based Plasma & Materials Technology, is battling to avoid being flattened by large foes.

In Campbell's case, the foes are Santa Clara-based Applied Materials Inc. and Fremont-based Lam Research, and the battlefield is the commercial marketplace of computer chip-making equipment.

Use the superlative of choice: "High-tech," "cutting edge" or "technological frontier." It doesn't get much more exotic than Campbell's PMT.

Campbell manufactures equipment which uses plasma - gas in a chamber treated with electricity and radio waves - to etch patterned channels on silicon wafers. The wafers are diced into chips, which are the basic units of computers, and also phones, televisions, VCRs, and more and more "smart" appliances and toys of all types.

"Here is a picture of a chip cut in half, and magnified about 100,000 times," says Campbell, in his Chatsworth headquarters. He points out channels and transistors in the chip, through which flows electricity.

Campbell says his plasma can etch more cleanly and precisely than the technology of rivals - and as chips become more complicated, PMT is in the catbird seat. "That is what we bring to the table - the ability to make things smaller and faster," he says.

Sounds simple, but Wall Street is not so easily impressed. Plasma & Materials Technology went public Aug. 23 at $14 a share, rose as high as $21 a share, but fell in the recent techno-bash on Wall Street to $12 a share. In trading last week, shares sold at $11.50 a share. Salomon Bros. was the underwriting firm, which garnered for PMT about $40 million.

The company employs almost 100, with nearly 40 in research and development - and the employee count is rising as revenues surge. For the third quarter, PMT reported net income of $376,000 on revenues of $6.5 million, compared with a loss of $1.3 million on revenues of $2.3 million in the year-earlier period.

Campbell, as might be expected from his surname, is Scottish - and in his case, it is a heritage to be taken seriously.

In his office there are framed reproductions of paintings of famous Scottish battles, and a calligraphic epistle on the meaning and duties of the Campbells (including the "extirpation" of the MacDonalds).

Not a movie-goer, Campbell nevertheless waxes ecstatic about two recent celluloid releases. "Have you seen 'Rob Roy' or 'Braveheart'? They were great pictures," he says.

So how does a Yank, even with a Scottish surname, become such fan of things Scottish?

"Although I was born here, when I was three and a half my father died, and my mother, who is Scottish, took us back to Scotland," explains Campbell.

His mother eventually returned to California, but Campbell stayed in the old country at Scottish boarding schools (returning home for summers and holidays), and then graduated from prestigious Cambridge University in Scotland - at the age of 20.

He chose UCLA for graduate studies when a school rugby coach espied Campbell grunting on the local gridiron one summer, and asked him to join the Bruins rugby team formally. The team was set to tour Fiji and other South Pacific locales "which sounded pretty good to me at the time," relates Campbell.

When not butting heads on the turf, Campbell hit the books, eventually earning a Ph.D. in physics.

"But I am independent - I had roomates who were studying at the GSM (Graduate School of Management), and I wondered if that wasn't really where I wanted to go. I knew I wanted to start my own company."

Promptly after graduating, that's what Campbell did, co-founding the business in 1985 with his former professor, Robert Conn.

The game plan was to develop technologies for others to exploit. "In the beginning, the idea was to just license and collect royalies," says Campbell. "We were essentially a one-man company - me. But I ran into a problem. Big companies move slowly. I was eager to move quickly."

Campbell did license a lens-coating plasma to Leybold, a big German company, but he had bigger fish to fry.

In 1989 Campbell invented a plasma-holding device capable of high-resolution etching of silicon wafers. Although Campbell's device is exotically high tech, the use of plasmas has been around a while. In fact, ordinary incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs contain gases which are electrically charged and which then glow - in short, a commonplace, commercial use of a plasma.

Campbell's plasma is special in that it is very dense, and thus can etch silicon very accurately - as in 0.18 of a micron (millionth of a meter). By way of comparison, a human hair is 100 microns.

Right now, the industry requires about 0.5 micron of accuracy, but as demands upon chips increase, the demand for greater resolution in etching will be required, says Campbell. Some applications are already calling for 0.3 micron of accuracy.

"The way of the industry is the smaller the better, because smaller allows faster and less cost," says Campbell.

Demand for chips is booming, as the computer industry expands, and as "smart" appliances become common in everyday devices, such as automobiles, airplanes, toys and other gizmos.

If PMT can outmaneuver the big boys, the world may land on Campbell's lap.

"I want this to be a billion-dollar company in five years," he says. "The elements are in place for that to happen."

As he strolls about his office, Campbell likes to refer to inspirational books, quotes or maxims. One of his: "Winners are people willing to do things that losers are unwilling to do."

Campbell says he is also a devout Christian, and points to the framed list of Campbell duties, which ends with the statement that "Christ crowns victory."

Too, Campbell is a fierce believer in the free enterprise system and does not believe the government should get involved backing companies - although, ironically, the biggest boost PMT got was when it won a Sematech contract, by Campbell's own assessment.

Sematech is a consortium of major U.S. chip manufacturers, and was established in the mid-1980s against the perceived threat of Japanese chip manufacturers. Such U.S. giants as Intel, Motorola and Texas Instruments, in alliance with the U.S. government, created a center to sponsor development to keep U.S. chip makers competitive.

PMT in 1992 won a contract from Sematech to develop superior methods of etching silicon - beating out giant Applied Materials.

"That really made the world sit up and take notice of us," says Campbell.

That recognition, plus the cash infusion from the recent IPO, has put PMT in a position to parry the big boys, says Campbell. "They used to be able to say, 'Don't buy from Plasma & Materials, you don't know about them, if they have the resources to back up thief equipment.' But now we have plenty of capital. We are solid, we are here to stay. You are going to hear a lot about us in the future."

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Gregor A. Campbell

Age: 36 Native of: Los Angeles Resident of: Glendale Education: B.A., M.A. from Cambridge University; Ph.D. from UCLA Spouse: Tamara