Sales & orders
The NASA smart card system integrator is MAXIMUS. The move shifts NASA from the low-frequency (125kHz) to industry-standard ISO 14443 technology. Different US government agencies using a GSC-IS compliant physical access system will have the option to allow each other's physical access cards to work in different secure areas.
A field trial is planned at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama this summer, with potential expansion to 2000 employees. If the trial is successful and approval is secured from the Office of Management and Budget, NASA plans to deploy more than 100,000 smart cards before the end of its 2005 fiscal year. This number includes cards for contractors and government employees.
EV Group (EVG) has shipped an EVG850 production bonder to a new US customer, Umicore Semiconductor Processing (USP) in Massachusetts. The EVG850 features EV Group's low-temperature, plasma-bonding technology.
USP produces ultra-flat and thin silicon and bonded thick-film silicon-on-insulator (SOI) for a variety of applications, including MEMS, MOEMS, microelectronics and optoelectronics. Substrate diameters of 100mm, 125mm, 150mm and 200mm will be produced. USP is part of Umicore, a Belgian precious-metals and advanced-materials producer.
Tokyo Electron (TEL) has placed a multi-unit repeat order for Therma-Wave integrated metrology tools. Therma-Wave's advanced INTEGRA CCD-i critical dimension (CD) tools will be used with TEL's CLEAN TRACK ACT and CLEAN TRACK LITHIUS coater developers for the advanced development and production of 90nm and 65nm technologies. Therma-Wave and TEL have been jointly working on CD metrology since last year.
Key customer benefits of integrated metrology include increasing overall productivity by eliminating offline CD measurement time delays, full wafer to wafer measurements for increased statistical sampling, tighter process monitoring and allowing the implementation of advanced process control (APC) for increased yields and new technologies.
Veeco Instruments received a $10mn order to supply its GaNzilla metal organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) production systems to Lumileds Lighting. The initial order was received during Veeco's Q2 and is part of a multi-year purchase order for additional systems. Lumileds makes high-power LEDs.
GaN-based LEDs are used in cell phone backlighting, automotive and traffic signals, and backlighting larger LCD screens. MOCVD is the critical deposition step that determines LED device functionality and brightness.
Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates (VSEA) has shipped a single wafer VIISta 80HP high current ion implanter to Nanya Technology's Fab 2 in Taiwan.
