Profile: Mattson Technology Inc (MTSN.O)

Mattson Technology, Inc. (Mattson), incorporated on November 18, 1988, is engaged in designing, manufacturing and marketing semiconductor wafer processing equipment used in the fabrication of integrated circuits (ICs or chips). Mattson is a supplier of dry strip and rapid thermal processing (RTP) equipment to the global semiconductor industry. The Company’s customer base includes foundries, memory and logic device manufacturers. The Company has design and manufacturing centers in the United States, Canada and Germany. Mattson’s manufacturing equipment is used for transistor level, or front-end-of-line manufacturing, and also in specialized applications for processing the interconnect layer, or back-end-of-line processing.

Dry Strip

A strip system removes photoresist (PR) or other residues from a wafer following each step of film deposition or diffusion processing in preparation for the next processing step. Methods for stripping off these residues include wet and dry technologies. The Company’s dry stripping systems, such as Suprema strip tools, create gaseous chemistries, or plasmas, to which the wafer is exposed to remove mask films and residues.

The Company Suprema system utilizes a wafer handling architecture. The Suprema features inductively coupled plasma (ICP) technology. The system utilizes an enhanced radio frequency (RF) matching network and a higher-capacity heating source to provide increased throughput. During the year ended December 31, 2008, the Company introduced Alpine, its low temperature dry strip system.

Rapid Thermal Processing

The Company’s rapid thermal processing (RTP) products feature dual-sided, lamp-based heating technology that provides enhanced process uniformity and repeatability for both 200 and 300-millimeter production. Its product lines include the 2900 for 200-millimeter applications, the Helios RTP system for 300-millimeter applications and the Atmos rapid thermal oxidation (RTO) system for 300 millimeter advanced oxidation applications. The Helios features a temperature measurement and control system that provides the uniformity, repeatability and reliability required for achieving superior device performance for 300-millimeter applications, including source drain anneals, spike anneals and nickel silicide (NiSi) formation. This dual-chamber RTP system is in volume production at 90 nanometers and below. The Company’s flash-assisted RTP system, Millios, which features an arc lamp technology is designed to enable its customers to meet advanced gate anneal and activation process requirements through the 32-nanometer technology node.

Etch (Isotropic and Low Aspect Ratio Reactive Ion)

Etching processes, which are repeated numerous times during the IC manufacturing cycle, selectively remove patterned material from the surface of a wafer to create the device structures. Plasma-based etching can be divided into sub categories: isotropic and anisotropic etching. An isotropic, or multi-directional, etch system utilizes neutral and low energy ions to perform a variety of etch processes on semiconductor wafers at and beyond the 65 nanometer node. Anisotropic etching, utilizes energetic ions to directionally etch the materials. Mattson’s Aspen III LiteEtch systems use its ICP source technology for isotropic etching applications on 200 and 300-millimeter wafers. The Company’s Nexion anisotropic etch systems are in qualification on several etch applications at a memory manufacturer, and one system has been accepted and is in volume production.

The Company competes with Axcelis Technologies, Novellus Systems, PSK, Applied Materials, Dainippon Screen Manufacturing Co.,Ltd, UltraTech Technologies, ASM International N.V., Kokusai Electric, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corporation.