Therma-Wave Receives SPIE Award at Prestigious Microlithography Symposium.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 26, 2003

Therma-Wave, Inc. (Nasdaq:TWAV), a leading supplier of advanced metrology equipment for the semiconductor industry, announced that researchers from the Company received the Award for Best Paper at the International Symposium on Microlithography, a technology conference sponsored by the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE). The symposium is being held this week in Santa Clara, California.

The Microlithography Symposium is a yearly forum at which scientists and engineers from leading high-technology companies, universities, and government research groups around the world publish methods that enable the electronics industry to create computer chips containing an increasing number of transistors. The Best Paper award is presented annually for the best research paper from the more than one hundred papers of the Symposium of the previous year.

The awarded paper is entitled "Fundamental Solutions for Real-Time Optical CD Metrology", and is the work of J. Opsal, H. Chu, Y. Wen and G. Li, all PhD researchers at Therma-Wave, Inc. and Professor Y.C. Chang of the University of Illinois. Dr. Jon Opsal is Chief Technology Officer at Therma-Wave, and has been responsible for its research since the company's founding in 1982. The research on CD metrology at Therma-Wave is the basis for the advanced metrology systems that Therma-Wave develops, manufactures and supplies to IC manufacturers worldwide. In the Optical CD metrology market, Therma-Wave's acclaimed products are RT/CD(TM), for Real-Time Critical Dimension metrology, and Opti-Probe(TM) Thin Film Metrology Systems. In the Optical CD metrology market, Therma-Wave's acclaimed product is RT/CD(TM), a Real-Time Critical Dimension Metrology System, supported by Opti-Probe(TM) Thin Film Metrology Systems.

The subject of the awarded paper is a break-through method for delivering real-time process control feedback for the manufacturing of state-of-art computer chips. The method involves illuminating the tiny circuit features with specially-prepared light, collecting the light that is reflected or "scattered" from the features, and then analyzing the light with a complex mathematical model to reveal within a few seconds the shape of the circuit features with great detail and precision.

Circuit features of advanced computer chips today are so submicroscopic that 100 million of them can fit within the area of the period at the end of this sentence. Because of the extremely small size of these so-called "Critical Dimension (CD)" circuit features, methods to control the manufacturing process of these features are of great industrial importance.

About Therma-Wave, Inc.

Since 1982, Therma-Wave, Inc., has been revolutionizing process control metrology systems through innovative proprietary products and technologies. The company is a worldwide leader in the development, manufacture, marketing and service of process control metrology systems used in the manufacture of semiconductors. Therma-Wave currently offers leading-edge products to the semiconductor manufacturing industry for the measurement of transparent and semi-transparent thin films; for the monitoring of ion implantation; and for the integration of metrology into semiconductor processing systems. For further information about Therma-Wave, Inc. and its products, access the web site at: http://www.thermawave.com.

To learn more about SPIE access www.spie.org.