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Technology Stocks : Cymer (CYMI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FJB who wrote (15652)	3/9/1998 8:53:00 PM
From: AJM	Respond to of 25960

BusinessWeek's coverage of U Texas 0.08 photo resist...No mention of CYMI. businessweek.com FAST, CHEAP, AND CUTTING-EDGE FINDING A WAY TO PRINT CHIPS FOR THE year 2010 was supposed to cost at least $1 billion. But C. Grant Willson, a chemist at the University of Texas at Austin, and a handful of graduate students may have pulled it off for roughly $2 million. They have produced a laboratory circuit with lines so small they border on the ethereal--just 0.08 microns wide. Today's most advanced chips have 0.25-micron lines. Five years ago, with a small grant from an arm of the Semiconductor Industry Assn. that supports academic research, Willson went looking for a new ''film'' for making chips. This so-called resist coating is applied to silicon wafers before circuit images are printed with laser light. Back then, he recalls, engineers believed nothing could both resolve such wispy lines and tolerate the etching that carves circuit lines into silicon. So when optical lithography reached its supposed 0.1-micron limit around 2006, a totally new tech nology, like X-ray lithography, would be needed. Now, Willson's crew has handed today's technology a new lease on life. The breakthrough came two years ago, with a chemical concoction that showed promise as a resist. Sematech Inc. coughed up $2 million to develop it, and engineers from makers of chipmaking equipment, including DuPont Photomasks, ISI, Shipley, and Tropel, flocked to Willson's laboratory to help. One photoresist supplier, Japan Synthetic Rubber Co., has already announced a commercial version of Willson's material. EDITED BY OTIS PORT