PMT ANNOUNCES CORPORATE NAME AND STOCK SYMBOL CHANGE; TRIKON TECHNOLOGIES, INC. BEGINS TRADING AS NASDAQ:TRKN.

CHATSWORTH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 31, 1997--Plasma & Materials Technologies, Inc. (previously NASDAQ:PMAT), an international supplier of etch and deposition equipment used to manufacture semiconductors, today changed its Corporate name to Trikon Technologies, Inc. and in conjunction with the name change, the Company's stock will begin trading today under a new ticker symbol - NASDAQ:TRKN.

"PMT completed the acquisition of Electrotech Group in late 1996 and, since then, we have diligently worked to combine and reorganize the Company into its present form," said Greg Campbell, Trikon's CEO. The end result is a new international organization with the broadest line of advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment available. Since our new Company has taken on a very different look and feel, we believe a corporate identity change is appropriate as we lay the foundation for our goal of building the next global semiconductor equipment manufacturer.

Trikon Technologies has been organized into three functional business divisions: Global Sales and Field Operations, Deposition, and Etch. Nigel Wheeler, Trikon's president and chief operating officer, is responsible for the operations of all three units. Mr. Wheeler reports to Greg Campbell. Corporate marketing, and finance & administration will also report to Mr. Campbell.

The Global Sales and Field Operations is headed by Trikon's Senior Vice President, Harvey Frye. Mr. Frye's organization is broken down into five groups: North America, Europe & the Middle East, Korea, Japan, and the ROW (Rest of World). Trikon operates worldwide through wholly owned subsidiaries in the U.K., Japan, Germany, France, and South Korea. In addition, Trikon has formed a `Global Accounts Program' for customers with operations located worldwide.

The Etch Division is located at Trikon's Corporate Headquarters in Chatsworth, Calif. All Etch operations -- engineering, manufacturing, marketing, training, etc. -- are centralized within the Etch unit in Chatsworth. Trikon's Deposition Division is headquartered in a new facility in Newport, Wales. The Deposition Division encompasses Trikon's proprietary Flowfill CVD and Forcefill PVD product lines. Similar to the Etch Division, all of Trikon's PVD and CVD operations are centralized within the Deposition Division's facility.

"We are extremely excited about the prospects of Trikon's three patented, differentiated technologies," said Greg Campbell. All three proprietary technologies -- Forcefill PVD, Flowfill CVD, and MORI Etch -- are showing customers both technology and cost of ownership advantages, and are being evaluated or moving into production with many customers worldwide. Trikon's goal is to continue winning new business and working with customers to adopt our systems into their production plans. According to industry analysts' estimates, the combined served market for these three differentiated technologies is expected to exceed $15 billion by the year 2000.

MORI HDP Etch

The patented MORI source is the heart of Trikon's Pinnacle 8000R high density plasma (HDP) etcher. Unlike competing plasma source technologies, the MORI source is a resonant induction source which is remote from the wafer and launches a radio frequency wave into the plasma. This method of plasma generation produces a high density of electrons and ions, and allows a reduction in the process pressure. In addition, the MORI plasma source provides users with the widest process window due to its unique ability to provide precise, hands-on control of uniformity -- fully independent of density, pressure, and chemistry.

The Pinnacle 8000R is being used for etching poly, metal, oxide, and integrated stack etch applications. Customers in Japan, U.S., and Korea are already using the Pinnacle 8000R for developing .35um, .25um, .18um and .10um devices. Currently, the system is under evaluation with many major semiconductor manufacturers including Texas Instruments, Hyundai, IBM, Toshiba, LG Semicon, Sharp, and LSI Logic. In 1996, Hyundai became the first major manufacturer to put multiple systems into production.

Forcefill PVD

Trikon's Forcefill PVD technology was developed to allow semiconductor manufacturers to return to using aluminum for their metalization needs, including the contact and vias. Because of traditional PVD's inability to fill small holes, advanced semiconductor manufacturers are forced to use an expensive and dirty technique to fill the contacts and vias for devices below .5um. This technique, called tungsten CVD, grows the metal up from the bottom of the hole and is followed by another step -- CMP or Etch back -- to grind the tungsten back down to the top of the hole. At this time, manufacturers use PVD to deposit the blanket aluminum across the wafer to complete the metalization for the layer of metal.

Trikon's Forcefill PVD replaces the costly CVD metalization scheme with one system. Using Trikon's Sigma PVD system, aluminum is deposited across the plane of the wafer which bridges the contact holes. Without breaking a vacuum, the wafer is then transferred into a Forcefill module where pressure is used to force the aluminum into the hole. The end result is an aluminum-only metalization technique that not only reduces costs by using only one system, but also makes faster semiconductor devices due to an eight times resistivity reduction by not using tungsten in the contact holes. Forcefill is being used to fill holes as small as .18um with 10:1 aspect ratios. Currently, the system is under evaluation with semiconductor manufacturers including Texas Instruments, Siemens, Mitsubishi, Fujitsu, Micron, National Semiconductor, and Sony.

Flowfill CVD

Trikon's Flowfill chemical vapor deposition (CVD) system uses a proprietary technology for planarized intermetal dielectric (IMD) deposition. Recently, Trikon announced a major breakthrough using Flowfill to lower the dielectric constant of the insulating (or dielectric materials) down around 2.0. This is a dramatic reduction from the industry's current dielectric constant of around 4.0. A reduction in dielectric constant from 4.0 to 2.0 should dramatically increase the speeds of advanced logic devices.

Prevailing intermetal dielectric deposition technologies include spin on glass (SOG) and HDP CVD followed by chemical mechanical polish (CMP). SOG requires single or multiple spins, a technique that is complex and slow, thus relatively expensive. Dielectrics produced by HDP CVD are superior in quality to SOG, although deposition rates are slower and the process requires a second step (CMP) to achieve planarization. Both SOG and HDP CVD have shown limited abilities to lower the dielectric constant of the materials deposited: SOG is approximately 4.0 and HDP CVD is approximately 3.2. It is widely considered necessary to have `low-k' dielectrics below 3.0 for next generation advanced logic devices.

Flowfill uses a novel technique of mixing methyl silane gas with hydrogen peroxide and condensing the by-product as a liquid onto the wafer. The film is then heat treated to produce a very high quality insulating layer that is capable of filling .1um gaps without voids or seams. Because the film is deposited in a liquid state, the surface tension forces of the liquid pull the film flat -- a self planarizing effect. The system's ability to fill small gaps and planarize simultaneously eliminates the need for CMP on some devices. Flowfill CVD is currently being evaluated by several DRAM manufacturers including Sony, Mitsubishi, Siemens, Oki, Ricoh, and Toshiba. After the Company's recent announcement of Flowfill's `low-k' results, Trikon has begun working with virtually every major logic manufacturer. The first Flowfill `low-k' system has already been purchased.

Trikon Technologies, Inc. provides a broad line of advanced manufacturing systems that are used for three of the four major processing steps in the manufacture of a semiconductor device: etch, physical vapor deposition (PVD), and chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The Company's corporate headquarters are located in Chatsworth, north of Los Angeles. Manufacturing is conducted in Newport, Wales and Chatsworth, California. PMT operates worldwide through wholly owned subsidiaries in the U.K., Japan, Germany, France, and South Korea.

CONTACT: Frederick Reynolds

818/886-8000 Ext. 155

Fax: [phone]

e-mail: [e-mail]

http://www.trikon.com