UK Government Announces Funding Award to Trikon to Develop 300 mm Deposition System for Nanotechnology.

NEWPORT, Wales, U.K. -- Trikon Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq:TRKN), today announced that the UK Government has awarded funding to Trikon to develop Broad Ion Beam Deposition (BIBD) technology for 300mm Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory (MRAM) manufacture. Total value of the award is up to 50% of the total project value of $5.92 million, with the project slated to last 18 months. The award was announced on the website of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), (see the release at http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/dti/.)

"Non-volatile memory is one of the hot topics in the nanotechnology industry and MRAM is the leading candidate in that field as it offers high density, low power consumption and near unlimited read/write cycles," said Keith Buchanan, Project Manager at Trikon. "BIBD technology has significant benefits for the building of the complex film stacks used in MRAM and this award recognizes the potential. Trikon has over 25 years of experience in Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) and BIBD is a form of PVD calling on many of the core abilities of Trikon such as high vacuum engineering, process clustering and wafer handling."

This award is part of the first to be allocated under the DTI's $162 million Micro and Nanotechnology Manufacturing Initiative (MNTI) launched in 2003, with further grants being made over the next 5 years. The initiative recognizes the role that nanotechnology will play in all manner of consumer applications in years to come, including memory applications as reported here, biotechnology, fuel cells and displays. The US National Science and Technology Council Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology sub-committee estimates a global nanotechnology market of $1 trillion by 2011-2015.

Fundamentally, MRAM memory devices consist of two ferromagnetic layers separated by thin insulating layers and information is stored as "0's" and "1's" based on controllable directions of magnetization. MRAM devices are built from stacks of multiple thin films nanometers thick. Makers need equipment capable of depositing layers with exact control of quality, thickness and smoothness; for a wide range of exotic materials with more added to the list as the technology develops.

BIBD offers significant benefits over magnetron sputtering approaches on account of the independent control of ion energy and flux maintain critical film properties, plus that ability to work in a high vacuum ambient necessary to deliver very smooth films. Other deposition methods such as Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) have been proposed for MRAM layers, but ALD is unable to match the wide flexibility of IBD, which can deposit practically any solid material. IBD was the technique used to build the first MRAM devices but the approach has not been scaled to 300 mm. This project will deliver a 300 mm BIBD tool capable of building the full stack plus insulator layers.

"The DTI MNTI promotes collaborative R&D in the rapidly developing field of nanotechnology. We are delighted to have been selected for funding and are keen to use the assets of Trikon and the established UK research base in BIBD and MRAM in particular to develop this new production tool. Ion beam technology is an enabling technique for other applications such as head components for hard disk drives, optical filters and the emerging nanotechnology of spintronics, which aims to exploit the spin of the electron to create much smaller and more versatile devices," said Dr. John Macneil, President & CEO of Trikon.

MRAM technology was first developed in the 1990's, and recently companies such as Motorola and Infineon have announced the start of prototype production. The new non-volatile memories are slated to displace flash memory in the medium term, with potential for breakthrough as a DRAM replacement in the long term (>2010). NanoMarkets LC forecast that the market for all next generation non-volatile memories will be worth $17.9 Billion by 2008, of which MRAM will contribute $3.8 billion.

About Trikon Technologies

Trikon Technologies is a leading provider of wafer fabrication equipment and services to the global semiconductor industry. Trikon develops and manufactures advanced capital equipment for plasma etching and chemical and physical vapor deposition (CVD and PVD) of thin films for use in the production of semiconductor devices. These are key components in most advanced electronic products, such as telecommunication devices, consumer and industrial electronics and computers. More information is available on the internet at: www.trikon.com.

"Safe Harbor" Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Act of 1995: This news release contains certain forward-looking statements that include, without limitation the receipt of funding from the UK government and the development and exploitation of BIBD technology. Additional factors that may cause actual results to differ are included in the more detailed cautionary statements included in the company's SEC reports, including, without limitation, its annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K.