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

To: David Aegis who wrote (2538)	7/10/1998 5:51:00 PM
From: Carl Mays	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3696

David, The operator interface on the XLS is Unix based with a touch screen and is icon driven. It is a good interface for R&D purposes but has been called complicated by production users. The auto set up capabilities are similar to what is available on ASM, Nikon and Canon but the system requires set up more frequently because it does not have a true through the lens alignment system. The local alignment system is off axis and therefore requires baseline adjustment to reference to the lens. The system diagnostics is limited compared to competitive equipment. The diagnostics will measure certain peripherals but is very limited in corrective feedback. The software in general is one of the weaknesses of the system because of continual lock up problems. This has caused the system to have a very poor MTBF performance. The "software upgrades" that you reference were simply patches to correct these type of constant failures. This is still a major problem. There have been no real software upgrades that could be sold as system improvements. The 2kw illuminator has not shipped yet to my knowledge. This illuminator is targeted for use with the Minolta 2248 lens but the last I heard there were several lens heating issues. This Minolta lens is very sensitive to heat effects, in fact if the lens temperature varies more than 3 degrees C, it does not acclimate back properly and will not image to specification. The projection lens requires factory adjustment at that point. This is an issue if the fab heats up for some reason or if the systems environmental chamber malfunctions. I believe the recent issues with the Tropel 2145 was related to the doublet and will take some time to determine if they are sorted out. Also, the focal distance of the Tropel lenses are very narrow and causes problems with outgassing that attacks the lower element of the lens. As far as thin film applications are concerned I think there are several obstacles to overcome. The wafer stage is simply not competitive. They still utilize a key and way system that requires stage oil on the surfaces. The same type of stage from the early/mid 80's. This stage system has a pretty severe yaw problem causing colinearity issues. I understand that if you measure the stage precision at the edge of the field it would perform only to about 80 nm, which is very poor. There are many other similar issues. They can be overcome but I believe it is a larger task than is being communicated, both in terms of investment $'s and time. ISI was working on a new stepper platform called ISIS that corrected many of these issues but the funding was eliminated and subsequently the program died. The ISIS tool was targeted to be completed 2 years ago before it was killed and it was designed to help bring ISI to a comparable position in many areas to the competition. The target performance specs were still not competitive from a throughput standpoint. Remember that was 2 years ago.