Applied Materials Inc
Organized in 1967, Applied, a Delaware corporation, develops, manufactures, markets
and services integrated circuit fabrication equipment for the worldwide semiconductor
industry. Customers for these products include semiconductor wafer manufacturers
and semiconductor integrated circuit (or chip) manufacturers, who either use the
semiconductors they manufacture in their own products or sell them to other companies
for use in advanced electronic components.
Most chips are built on a silicon wafer base and include a variety of circuit
components, such as transistors and other devices, that are connected by multiple
layers of wiring (interconnects). As the density of the circuit components is
increased to enable greater computing power in the same or smaller area, the
complexity of building the chip also increases, necessitating the formation
of smaller structures and more intricate wiring schemes. To build a chip, the
transistors, capacitors and other circuit components are first created on the
surface of the wafer by performing a series of processes to deposit and remove
selected film layers. Similar processes are then used to build the layers of
wiring structures on the wafer. A typical, simplified process sequence for building
the wiring portion of copper-based chips involves initially depositing a dielectric
film layer onto the base layer of circuit components using a chemical vapor
deposition (CVD) system. An etch system is then used to create openings and
patterns in the dielectric layer. To form the metal wiring, these openings and
patterns are subsequently filled with conducting material using physical vapor
deposition (PVD) and/or electrochemical plating (ECP) technologies. A chemical
mechanical polishing (CMP) step then polishes the wafer to maintain a flat surface.
Additional deposition, etch and CMP steps are then performed to build up the
layers of wiring needed to complete the interconnection of the circuit elements
to form the chip. Advanced chip designs require about 500 steps involving these
and other processes to complete the manufacturing cycle.
Applied operates in a single industry segment for the manufacture, marketing
and servicing of integrated circuit fabrication equipment. Applied currently
manufactures systems that perform most of the primary steps in the chip fabrication
process, including: atomic layer deposition (ALD), CVD, PVD, ECP, etch, ion
implantation, rapid thermal processing (RTP), CMP, metrology and wafer inspection.
Applied’s subsidiary, AKT, Inc. (AKT), manufactures CVD systems and array testers
for making flat panel displays (FPDs) used in notebook computers, desktop monitors,
televisions and other applications. Applied’s subsidiary, Etec Systems, Inc.
(Etec), is a manufacturer of systems that generate, etch, measure and inspect
circuit patterns on masks used in the photolithography process. Applied also
provides products and services to enhance manufacturing yields.
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