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Technology Stocks : Applied Materials No-Politics Thread (AMAT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kirk © who wrote (661)	11/27/2001 11:30:37 AM
From: michael97123	Respond to of 25522

Kirk, You(Shatner) lost on the special Star Trek addition of "The Weakest Link" last night. Whats up with that? mike PS Hate the show but just had to watch the star trek one--Still a Trekkie after all these years.

To: Kirk © who wrote (661)	11/28/2001 2:08:15 AM
From: frozenchosen	Respond to of 25522

Kirk: Thanks for your encouragement. AMAT kept my port afloat today. I really don't mean to get far OT but I just discovered that Kmart subsidized each of my purchases. Nice of them. I will not buy their stock though. Hope they sell lots of Santas containing semiconductors. Nov 28 Wall Street Journal "Kmart's loss widened to $224 million in its latest quarter due to weaker sales and a charge to overhaul its supply chain. " Like the Dream song too. Listened to it via the AMAT site. Guess one could extract the audio and rip a CD. Gotta chill out for awhile. Keep Smilin' F.C.

To: Kirk © who wrote (661)	11/28/2001 7:41:20 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 25522

Applied Materials Launches Innovative Nitridation Technology for Advanced Transistor Manufacturing DPN Technology Enables the Scaling of Gate Dielectric for 100nm Devices SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 28, 2001-- Applied Materials, Inc. (Nasdaq:AMAT - news) today introduces the DPN (Decoupled Plasma Nitridation) chamber, a critical process technology that enables the fabrication of transistor gate dielectric structures in next-generation chips. The single-wafer DPN process incorporates a high concentration of nitrogen into the surface of an ultra-thin gate oxide to prevent boron penetration and reduce leakage current, resulting in repeatable and reliable transistors for 130nm and below device designs. ``The DPN solves several key technical challenges, enabling chipmakers to extend their use of silicon dioxide for gate dielectric applications beyond the 100nm device generation,'' said Paul Meissner, vice president and general manager of Applied Materials' Thermal Systems and Modules Business Group. ``We already have over a dozen DPN chambers in use for production, as well as in 100nm-generation gate development at some of our most advanced customers' fabs throughout the world. The versatility of this process, which can be easily integrated on a single cluster tool platform with our other single-wafer gate fabrication technologies, makes it very attractive for extending transistor fabrication for the next several device generations.'' The DPN chamber is derived from Applied Materials' production-proven DPS (Decoupled Plasma Source) etch chamber, which has an installed base of more than 700 chambers. The DPN chamber features a new ultra-clean, quasi-remote plasma source specifically designed for use with sensitive ultra-thin gate oxides. Since the DPN chamber uses a plasma rather than conventional thermal process to introduce nitrogen to the gate oxide, a higher concentration of nitrogen can be incorporated into the gate oxide without damage to the channel interface. The nitridation of gate oxides is considered to be a critical process to ensure the continued scaling of devices. Applied Materials' DPN process enables gate scaling beyond the 100nm design node by preventing the diffusion of boron from the electrode into the device channel region and reducing the equivalent oxide thickness to less than 14 angstroms. The DPN process also delivers greater than 20x improvement in gate leakage over pure oxide. The single-wafer design of the DPN chamber is easily integrated on Applied Materials' Gate Stack Centura system to provide an optimized, repeatable process sequence on one platform. In addition to reducing queue time, the Gate Stack system enables faster cycle time for increased operational efficiency. This single wafer cluster system also provides the benefit of reduced thermal budget over conventional batch processing -- which is critical for advanced CMOS device manufacturing. The chambers available on the Gate Stack Centura system include: RTP (Rapid Thermal Processing) ISSG(TM) (In Situ Steam Generation) for dielectric film growth DPN for gate oxide nitridation RTP for post-nitridation anneal POLYgen(TM) for the polysilicon gate electrode. ``As the gate oxide thins down to only a few monolayers, organic contamination from fab exposure affects the integrity of the gate stack structure. Having all the gate fabrication technologies on a single platform under vacuum provides a clean interface between layers for higher device reliability,'' stated Meissner. ``The Gate Stack Centura with DPN technology enables customers to extend the combination of silicon and its oxide to the 70nm technology node without having to resort to new high dielectric constant materials that face complicated device integration challenges.'' Applied Materials (Nasdaq:AMAT - news), the largest supplier of products and services to the global semiconductor industry, is one of the world's leading information infrastructure providers. Applied Materials enables Information for Everyone(TM) by helping semiconductor manufacturers produce more powerful, portable and affordable chips. Applied Materials' Web site is appliedmaterials.com. Note: A Photo is available at URL: businesswire.com