A "key customer" for Entegris has completed conversion to wafer carriers made from a proprietary blend of polyetheretherketone (PEEK) and carbon fibre.

Aehr Test Systems has received a $2m order for engineering development of a

full 200mm and 300mm wafer contact test system. The system will be developed

using proprietary interconnect and parallel test technology from Aehr Test

Systems' full wafer contact FOX product line. The system provides individual

device under test (DUT) power supplies.

CJ Meurell, president and chief operating officer says: "A DFT or JTAG test

strategy eliminates many of the barriers to full wafer contact and allows

for an extremely cost effective test solution. Testing an entire wafer of

dies at the same time certainly changes the dynamics of manufacturing test

costs and throughput improvements."

This development project includes performance milestones to be completed

during 2002 and 2003.

Coherent has received a multi-year contract from International SEMATECH

(ISMT) for lasers used in the development of advanced photomasks. The

agreement is for development of laser systems at wavelengths below 200nm,

which will be required to fabricate photomasks for the sub-70nm technology

nodes.

BOC Edwards has a seven-year contract to supply bulk atmospheric gas

systems, gas cabinets, process gases and on-site service support to the

solar cell manufacturing facility of United Solar Systems Corporation (USSC)

in Auburn Hills MI. The gases covered include argon, hydrogen, nitrogen and

silane. USSC's solar panels have three amorphous semiconductor solar

sub-cells with various spectral response characteristics. This allows the

cell to convert the visible and near-infrared wavelengths of sunlight with

optimal efficiency. USSC is a joint venture between Energy Conversion

Devices (ECD) and Bekaert.

Seiko Epson has qualified Electroglas' QuickSilver IIe die inspection system

for gold bumped LCD driver circuit production.