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

To: KYA27 who wrote (5847)	1/25/1999 8:26:00 PM
From: R. K. (Chip) Constantian Jr.	Respond to of 21876

Lucent, Applied, ASM seek speedier semiconductors Monday January 25, 6:36 pm Eastern Time NEW YORK, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:LU - news), Applied Materials Inc. (Nasdaq:AMAT - news) and ASM Lithography Holding N.V. will team up to accelerate the development of next-generation semiconductor manufacturing technology, the companies said Monday. The method, called Scalpel electron beam lithography, was invented in 1989 by Lucent's Bell Labs research arm, and is a potential successor to current methods for making smaller, more powerful computer chips. Scalpel technology uses an electron beam source instead of a light source to imprint the image of a chip's design onto silicon. Computer chips, or semiconductors, are made by imprinting images on silicon wafers, then using chemicals to remove parts of the silicon, thereby creating the circuits necessary for the chips to function. Semiconductors require extremely small features, with current features about 400 times smaller than a human hair, and need to be able to reduce those sizes to increase their processing power. Reducing the size of chip components makes chips faster because of the shorter distance electrical signals must travel. So far, the number of transistors packed onto a single silicon chip has doubled every two years. The companies, including Lucent, which is primarily a telecommunications equipment company, and Applied Materials and ASM, which provide services to chip-makers, said their intention is to turn the technology into commercially viable manufacturing tool. Several of the world's leading semiconductor companies also have expressed interest in supporting the effort, they said, though no financial terms of the companies' agreement were disclosed.