From Electronic News--June 14, 1999
Applied Debuts CMP System
Mirra Mesa integrates post-CMP cleaning
By Jeff Dorsch
Austin—In only three years, Applied Materials Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif. became the top vendor in chemical mechanical polishing (CMP).
The world's largest capital equipment company now is trying to consolidate its dominance of the CMP market with a new model that integrates wafer polishing and cleaning capabilities on one platform.
Applied last week introduced the Mirra Mesa, a successor to the Mirra CMP system first rolled out in December 1995. Mirra Mesa integrates megasonics cleaning onto the Mirra platform, providing a dry-in/dry-out approach to polishing wafers for multiple film layers.
Rob Davenport, Applied's director of global product management, said the Mirra Mesa will go into beta-site testing this month, with general availability later this year at standard lead times. He declined to provide details on pricing, other than to say it will be consistent with Applied pricing policy and competitive with other vendors' products.
Applied stated it has commitments for Mirra Mesa systems from several unidentified customers in the United States and Taiwan. The market research firm of Dataquest Inc., San Jose, estimates that the market for integrated CMP systems, incorporating polishing and cleaning, will be the fastest-growing segment of CMP equipment over the next five years, growing by an average of 32 percent a year.
Aimed at all CMP applications, the Mirra Mesa is said to be capable of handling any number of dielectric and metal films, including oxide, copper and tungsten. To support copper interconnect manufacturing, the Mesa cleaner utilizes Applied's proprietary ElectraClean solution to help resist corrosion on the wafer and to remove post-CMP copper particles.
The Mesa cleaner can be configured with up to four process modules, Applied said: a single-wafer immersion megasonic module, two double-sided brush scrubber stations and a spin rinse dryer. The system transfers five wafers simultaneously, and each module requires only 30 seconds of process time.
The Mesa cleaner represents an effort by Applied to reduce its dependence on third-party suppliers to provide the post-CMP cleaning element in a CMP configuration, said Min Pang, capital equipment analyst for SG Cowen, an investment banking firm. Of the estimated 250 Mirra CMP systems shipped by Applied, 40 of them were configured with post-CMP cleaners made by OnTrak Systems Inc. (now a division of Fremont, Calif.-based Lam Research Corp.) and Dainippon Screen Manufacturing Co. Ltd. of Kyoto, Japan, Pang added.
"I'm sure Applied doesn't want to be beholden to a competitor," Pang said, referring to its use of Lam/OnTrak equipment. Lam acquired OnTrak in 1997, after OnTrak had established a business relationship with Applied.
Lam and Applied are strong competitors in the field of plasma etching equipment, and they are nominal competitors in the area of CMP. Lam last year introduced its Teres CMP system, which also includes a cleaning capability.
Lam, however, didn't ship its first Teres units until the last quarter of calendar 1998, and disclosed in a 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it didn't receive any revenues from those unit shipments, perhaps indicating that they are only evaluation units.
When it comes to CMP, "Applied has everything else, but not the CMP clean," Pang said, and the Mirra Mesa addresses that deficiency.
Applied is covering all the CMP bases with its proposed acquisition of Obsidian Inc., a developer of fixed-abrasive CMP technology that doesn't need slurries to polish the wafers. In announcing the deal late last month, Applied said it would issue 2.5 million shares of common stock to acquire the privately held Obsidian.
At last week's market price, the Obsidian deal carries an indicated value of $158.4 million. |
