Sales & Orders
for ASMLs Thermal division under a multi-year contract. The agreement
includes responsibility for sourcing and procurement of all materials, and
assembly and testing of all toolsets. ASML Thermal offers large-batch and
single-wafer thermal process furnaces and atmospheric pressure chemical
vapour deposition (APCVD) systems.
Beginning immediately, ASML Thermal will outsource its supply chain
management and manufacturing operations worldwide to a new Ashland Fab
Services facility in Arizona. ASML will continue to lead all R&D and new
product design activities. It also will be solely responsible for worldwide
sales and support for its products.
Ashland currently serves as the factory authorised refurbisher of ASML
Thermal vertical thermal reactor (VTR) and APCVD processing systems. Thermal
represents one of the companys underperforming divisions inherited from
ASMLs merger with US company SVG.
Yield Engineering Systems has chosen Adept Technology to develop a new 300mm
platform for fully automated vacuum cure oven processes. The YES-450PBX4-300
platform will use Adept SmartController, 6-axis robot and SmartModule
linked by the SmartServo FireWire-based distributed network.
Bill Moffat, chief engineering officer for Yield Engineering Systems, says
"We believe this new fully-automated vertical laminar flow polyimide bake
solution will provide the best process for the curing of both polyimide or
BCB, as well as copper anneal."
JMAR Technologies Microelectronics Division has been awarded two new
contracts totalling $5mn to enhance semiconductor fabrication processes at
the Advanced Reconfigurable Manufacturing for Semiconductors (ARMS) foundry
owned and operated by the US Defense Microelectronics Activity (DMEA) in
California.
General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems (GDAIS) issued the contracts
as part of the US Defense Departments Advanced Technology Support Program
(ATSP). General Dynamics is a prime contractor for DMEA.
