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EXPANSIONS AND ACQUISITIONS

CMP pact saves water

SpeedFam-IPEC will employ water conservation technology in its CMP systems under the terms of an alliance signed recently with Lucid Treatment Systems. According to the proposal, SpeedFam-IPEC will provide Lucid's WIS and Wisard point-of-use systems to clients using SpeedFam's polishers. The Lucid systems reclaim the water used in CMP polishing. According to the supplier, Lucid WIS systems installed at SpeedFam's application lab in Arizona and at a customer site have shown savings of 65% in DI-water costs. Reclaimed water can be used in the polishers for nonprocess use as well as in cooling towers and exhaust scrubbers. Lab tests and field experience prove that the technology can recycle "a significant portion" of the ultrapure water used by SpeedFam-IPEC's Auriga and Auriga C polishers, according to Lucid.

Entegris finally emerges...

Entegris has finally made its debut following a merger announcement earlier this year involving Fluoroware of Minnesota and Empak of Colorado. The new company is based in Chaska, MN, and focuses on materials management products for the semiconductor, data storage, chemical processing, and pharmaceutical industries. Among the products is a carrier for 300-mm wafers. The merger creates a worldwide company with 17 manufacturing plants and 70 sales offices on six continents. Entegris comprises four business units covering critical fluid management; electronic shipping products; wafer management systems; and test, assembly, and packaging. A fifth is a private-label business making custom products.

A nine-member board of directors will oversee company operations. Members include Dan Quernemoen, Stan Geyer, and Jim Dauwalter, Fluoroware's chairman, CEO, and COO, respectively. Other board members are Del Jensen, Jim Bernards, and Mark Bongard. The first two executives are Empak's CEO and director, respectively; Bongard is CEO of Emplast, a related business.

...and signs piping alliance

Entegris has teamed with Austria-based Agru and Asahi/America to offer a fully characterized process for welding PFA piping components. The alliance gives Agru and Asahi/America a license to use Entegris's patented automated infrared fusion process. The Agru SP 110 welding tool will offer users of Entegris's PureBond piping the option of using a fully automated fusion system. The automated tool would complement existing manual tools, according to Kate Smith, Entegris's strategic business manager. She says that customers must understand the different fusion parameters of the high-purity PFA resins used in the components in order to take advantage of the PureBond weld connections. Under the terms of the agreement, Asahi/America will sell or rent the SP 110 in North America. Agru will offer the same services in Europe and Asia.

EKC opens CMP labs

EKC Technology, a supplier of wafer-cleaning and surface-preparation chemicals, has opened two CMP applications labs. A $6-million facility at the company's headquarters in Hayward, CA, will be used to develop slurries. The second lab is an expansion of EKC's facility at the KSP Science Park near Tokyo. It will focus on the Japanese market. EKC also introduced two products for advanced planarization in the manufacturing of ICs using copper and tungsten interconnects. The MicroPlanar CMP9000 tool employs a stable oxidizer to minimize line dishing and array erosion, according to the company. The CMP3300 uses a nonmetallic stable oxidizer to minimize tungsten plug erosion in local interconnects.

Veeco eyes OptiMag

Looking to expand its family of in-line metrology tools, Veeco Instruments of Plainview, NY, has signed a letter of intent to buy OptiMag. Based in San Diego, OptiMag makes automated optical defect inspection and process control equipment for the thin-film magnetic head industry. Veeco believes the products are a good match for its line of atomic force microscopes, optical interferometers, and stylus profilers. Completion of the acquisition awaits final approval by the boards of directors of both Veeco and OptiMag as well as standard government approval.

Suss buys coater line

Suss MicroTec of Munich has purchased the coating systems product line of Fairchild Technology's semiconductor equipment group. Suss plans to integrate Fairchild's Falcon and Series 2000/6000 coaters into its own line of spin coaters. The integrated systems will be available in 2000, the company says. Chipmakers are using installed Falcon systems to manufacture 256-Mb DRAMs, according to Suss. The German firm did not disclose the terms of the agreement but did say that Fairchild will buy up to 300,000 Suss shares as part of the deal.

Asyst adds to tool line

Asyst Technologies has decided to add a missing component to its line of wafer isolation and materials management tools. The Fremont, CA—based equipment and software manufacturer has bought Palo Alto Technologies (PAT) for approximately $4.5 million. The acquisition marks Asyst's entry into the $100-million wafer transport segment of the fab automation market, says Dennis Riccio, Asyst's senior vice president of global customer operations. Automated material transport will be essential for processing 300-mm wafers, according to Asyst, which makes robots, SMIF systems, and related factory automation products. The vendor has hired David Feindel, former vice president and general manager of Daifuku America's clean factory automation division, to oversee the new transport automation systems unit. Asyst will retain PAT's employees and make the company a wholly owned subsidiary.

ASML forms NGL center

Arizona State University Research Park in Tempe is the site of a new center established by ASM Lithography (ASML) to develop advanced image-processing technologies. Center researchers will study photoresists, masks, illumination sources, and lens designs. The staff will also work with optics partner Carl Zeiss and startup ASML MaskTools to explore optical extension technologies. Additionally, the center will investigate extreme UV, electron-beam, and ion-beam lithography.

Team tackles TEM samples

Two equipment vendors claim a new method they've developed for preparing transmission electron microscopy (TEM) samples increases productivity and throughput. FEI, a supplier of advanced metrology systems, and Sela, a maker of microcleaving tools, have combined their systems to provide TEM-ready samples in less than two hours. The key to the reduction in sample-preparation time is the integration of Sela's TEMstation and FEI's FIB 200 TEM workstation, the partners say. Operators can load automatically packaged samples directly from Sela's TEMstation into the FIB workstation to minimize handling problems. The Sela tool produces a 20-µm TEM sample in 15 minutes. FEI's FIB system then completes the sample-preparation process in 45 minutes or less, according to the companies.

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