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Technology Stocks : JMAR Technologies(JMAR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilberry who wrote (4632)	12/27/1997 4:10:00 PM
From: Bilberry	Respond to of 9695

Here is some more info on the XRL program of JMAR: The total size of the lithography market is substantial. The semiconductor industry purchases between 1,500 to 2,000 new lithography systems per year at prices ranging from approximately $700,000 to $7 million. As the circuit feature sizes get smaller the prices of the lithography systems increase rapidly. In X-ray lithography, the illumination is provided by the X-ray source. From 1989 to 1991, the Company designed, patented and developed an optical pulse-compression technique and integrated it with its ACEL excimer laser to produce X-rays in the 10-14 angstrom regime where a substantial amount of lithography process development has already taken place, worldwide. In February 1991, the Company successfully tested a laboratory version of its excimer laser-driven plasma X-ray source, thereby achieving a major milestone in its program. Also, in subsequent experiments with a U.S. government laboratory, the Company demonstrated X-ray generation at 130 angstroms (commonly referred to as the Extreme Ultraviolet or "EUV" regime) using a 50 nanosecond laser pulse duration. Sources producing illumination in both the X-ray and EUV wavelength regimes are expected to find applications in future generations of lithography. In January, 1994, after working on smaller government funded X-ray lithography R&D contracts in prior years, JMAR received a $3.6-million contract, with an option exercisable by the U.S. government for an additional $3.3 million, (of which $585,000 was funded in late 1995 and $2.2 million in 1996), to develop JMAR's laser-plasma Picosecond X-ray Source ("PXS") for use in an X-ray stepper system. Additional DARPA funding is anticipated in 1997 to develop a prototype PXS for an entry-level x-ray lithography system with a throughput of 5 to 10 wafers per hour. The revenues from this contract constitute 9% of the Company's 1996 sales. The contract was issued by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the Department of Defense. By the end of 1997, the Company expects that the cumulative amount of U.S. government contract funding for its X-ray lithography point source development program will total in excess of $9,000,000. During the initial portion of its work under contract the Company made considerable progress in the generation of high-repetition few picosecond (one picosecond is equal to one trillionth of a second) excimer laser pulses which proved advantageous for the generation of the required X-rays with a minimum of contamination (one of the problems which has plagued attempts by other competitors to produce practical X-ray sources has been the production of unacceptable amounts of collateral debris that contaminates the lithography process). During the latter part of 1994, JMAR initiated an Independent Research and Development (IR&D) program based on the use of leading-edge diode-pumped solid state laser technology to produce rapid rates of high energy few-picosecond pulses for a range of potential applications, including X-ray lithography. That program progressed so rapidly that the Company, with the concurrence of its customer, phased in its new solid state PXS system as its primary commercial X-ray source candidate and assigned its excimer laser-based PXS to the study of more basic X-ray generation phenomenological studies. In July 1996 the U.S. government delivered to JMAR's San Diego facility a government-owned X-ray Stepper which had formed the nucleus of a competitive X-ray Lithography program at Bell Laboratories. That Stepper, developed over a period of several years at an estimated cost of more than $25 million in both government and other corporation funding, was intended, subject to the availability of adequate government contract funding, to be integrated with JMAR's solid state PXS to provide the foundation for an X-ray lithography workstation to be made available to leading semiconductor makers for development of next generation chip manufacturing processes. Since that delivery the Company has been evaluating the alternatives available to it for expediting the commercialization of its X-ray lithography sources. It is now also considering other alternatives for the establishment of a point source X-ray lithography demonstration work station, including recently developed commercial X-ray steppers as well as the Bell Labs Stepper. The new $10 million ARPA contract exceeds all the moneys received (9 million) by JMAR since 1994 for the XRL program. --Bilberry