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Technology Stocks : Ultratech Stepper -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Justa Werkenstiff who wrote (2467)	5/20/1998 10:06:00 PM
From: JBonline	Respond to of 3696

Nice 'n meaty, justa. Thanks! (eom)

To: Justa Werkenstiff who wrote (2467)	5/21/1998 8:01:00 AM
From: Jonathan Bartlett	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3696

Justa, Thanks for taking the time to put that together. Real information like that brings tears to my eyes. Jon

To: Justa Werkenstiff who wrote (2467)	5/25/1998 6:12:00 AM
From: Carl Mays	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3696

Justa, This sounds like a marketing press release from UTEK. Unfortunately the facts are not as clear as stated. I'm not sure if there were ever 21 sales/service offices but the average number of service engineers per office would be about 3 if this number is correct. There are no sales people left at ISI, all of their field sales engineers have voluntarily left the organization over the past 15 months. The biggest problem is that the XLS system that you reference is not close to being a product offering for the disk drive industry. This system was designed eight years ago for silicon use and has many technical obstacles to overcome for the DD application. The 4x reduction stepper that you mentioned is the 2955 i-line system. They only have a total quantity of (3) 2955 lenses and they are ones that were bought back from DEC when they discontinued use of the XLS. Tropel cannot produce these lenses anymore. These 3 lenses are 7+ years old now and have been at ISI for more than 2 years without a buyer. These lenses have a fixed NA, which is not suitable for DD. Certainly ISI has had a great price advantage trying to sell these used lenses in XLS systems but they have not had any success to this point. ISI has sold similarly configured systems at less than $1.5 million and will probably need to double that price with a new lens offering. To enter the DD market, they need a wide field variable NA/sigma lens. Tropel has never produced a programmable variable NA/sigma lens. Nikon, ASM, and Canon have offered these types of lenses for many years. Another major problem with the Tropel lenses is that the focal distance between the bottom element of the lens and the substrate is extremely small. It is 10 times smaller than some of the competition's lenses. This causes problems with photoresist outgassing. The bottom element of the lens is exposed to the outgassing causing contamination of the lens which requires constant cleaning and often leads to damage of the coating on the lens. This problem is particularly acute with thick resists and higher dose applications such as DD. The competition places a film between the lens and the substrate to alleviate this problem but due to the extremely small focal distance on the Triopel lens this is not possible. Unfortunately, many Tropel lenses have become consumables because of this issue. The 3160 i-line lens that has been designed but is a year away from delivery has this issue as well. Remember, these lenses were designed for silicon use, with film thicknesses of only 1 micron. Many DD processes require 10 - 20 microns of resist. There are many other technical issues as well that include substrate handling, z-stage travel, substrate expansion during alignment and focus drilling. The XLS must be modified in all of these areas to be utilized for the DD application. How long will this project take considering that ISI's engineering department has been severely depleted and a service manager is currently managing the group. This will be a difficult task, but the biggest problem is that the competition is offering these systems now and the XLS is way behind. DD customers will be making purchase decisions over the next 3 - 12 months and UTEK will not have a product to demonstrate. UTEK will promote the XLS as the ideal DD system but the tool was never designed for the application and is simply being promoted and marketed differently.