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Technology Stocks : Ultratech Stepper

UTEK 30.23

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Jun 5 5:00 PM EST

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To: Andrew Vance who wrote (1121)	8/13/1997 10:39:00 AM
From: WALLY THE SANDCRAB	of 3696

re: "poletrimming" in pursuit of maximum confusion with minimal clarity, I thought I'd add some mud to the water. My guess: Poletrimming has to be trimming of R/W heads after etch and breakout from the multihead bar. I'm interested in a small Mass. company called Micrion which sells ion beam systems used to trim heads. This is essentially micromachining application. Incidentally, the use of ion beams in semiconductor and magnetic head applications is extremely interesting; for those with a technical thirst, looking at Micrion's published materials is highly informative. Here are some excerpts from what I have on the process. ........Need for higher hard disk densities drives need for smaller R/W heads. However, the current photolithographic technology used to manufacture the heads has seemingly reached a barrier where heads less than four to seven microns in width cannot be reliably produced.......... A pallet of row bars, containing hundreds or thousands of magnetic heads is placed in the focused ion beam (FIB) system. The stage precisely positions the heads under the ion beam column. The system produces an image of a head pair. The image is automatically processed and analyzed in order to determine the type of micromachining required in order to transform the existing head into one the meets all of the size and shape requirements. The FIB system automatically defines the micromachining parameters and performs the work.......... My thoughts: 1.) interesting how they say 4 to 7 microns is limiting size. I wonder why? 2.) ion beam systems are expensive to buy and maintain. If UTEK is doing lithography for the heads, it would seem logical for them to direct some of their micromachining efforts toward "poletrimming" RECKON? Wally

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