Advanced Semiconductor Materials NV’s ASM Lithography, Veldhoven, the Netherlands, has consolidated previous successes in the US sub-micron wafer stepper market with a contract to supply IBM Corp with its new PAS 5500/80 i-line stepper, valued at around $2m. IBM, which currently uses ASM’s PAS5500/60 stepper, will take delivery of the machine at its East Fishkill, New York facility later this month. The 5500/80 is claimed by ASM to have the largest exposure field of any stepper available for half-micron production, which, according to ASM Executive Scientist Steve Wittekok, will enable larger, more complex chips to be produced more easily. Wittekok says the device is optimised for the manufacture of 16M-bit dynamic RAM devices, the non-critical layers of 64M-bit DRAMs, as well as Application Specific Integrated Circuits of similar complexity. ASM expects to finalise a sale with a Taiwanese chip manufacturer before the end of January. Other US customers include Advanced Micro Devices.
