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Technology Stocks : MEMC INT'L. (WFR -NYSE) The Sleeping Giant? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (4603)	11/1/2000 1:19:03 PM
From: olduvai5	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4697

Hi Ze'ev, I'm a little out of date, too. Last real contact I had w/ 300mm was last fall and at that time, the slice was at between 3 and 5mm and polish was at 1.0 to 1.2mm. Figure blade waste at 5-6mm and you get about 1 wafer per 10 to 12mm of usable boule length. The boules also had a fair amount of taper to them and were being grown over diameter to compensate. Some intense effort was going on to cut the grow time down from 4 days to <2. WFR has been doing research in fits and starts all along, so it's not really a standing start for them. I would be surprised if they weren't able to get to reasonable volume production within a year of setting up a new "Sherwood Forest". I believe they were still having obstacles in planarization and bulk defects. Sumnitomo demonstrated thin epi deposition on 300mm in 98 with a kludged 200mm reactor so planarization isn't strictly necessary, but 300mm epi would be wicked expensive! I know FERO sold their puller business, but I can't recall to whom. They were quoting 2-3MM for a production grade puller before they sold out. I don't know what Leybold is asking and Sumitomo gets theirs' in house. Hope that helps... olduvai5