Ultratech Acquires Oraxion Assets

Ultratech Inc., a San Jose supplier of lithography and laser-processing systems used to manufacture semiconductors and nanotechnology devices, announced this week it has acquired certain assets of Oraxion, Inc., a Fremont-based manufacturer of advanced surface-metrology and stress-analysis equipment for the semiconductor and related industries.

Ultratech said the transaction is an important component of its strategic growth endeavors in the laser-processing arena. It said it plans to use Oraxion's CGS-300 wafer inspection/metrology tool in conjunction with its own LSA100 laser spike anneal system used for 65-nm and other next-generation devices.

Arthur W. Zafiropoulo, Ultratech's chairman and CEO, said, "This acquisition allows us to create a fusion of specific technologies that will add significant value to our advanced-device processing systems and ideally position Ultratech to better serve our global customer base."

The company said the CGS-300 "represents the next generation of stress metrology tools, enabling highly accurate characterization of stress accumulation as the patterned wafer is processed. As opposed to traditional metrology tools, which produce full wafer maps using only 300 points of data on a blanket film at a throughput of 2 wph, the CGS-300 uses a coherent gradient sensing (CGS) metrology to simultaneously provide nearly 600,000 points of data at a throughput of approximately 15 wph."

Ultratech said this "combination of speed and accuracy is essential to meeting leading-edge fabs' continually escalating demand for higher throughput and yields."

For more information, visit: www.ultratech.com