May 11, 2007 – The German company Carl Zeiss SMT AG has appointed Frank P. Averdung president of Carl Zeiss SMT Inc. in Peabody, Mass. Averdung has more than 20 years of management experience in sales, marketing, technical support, and operations in the semiconductor industry. He was previously general manager at Applied Materials and Etec Systems.

The American subsidiary is responsible for sales, service and application support in the US and Canada of Carl Zeiss SMT´s high-tech systems for qualification and repair of reticles used in the production of semiconductors and for SMT´s particle beam systems, in particular electron microscopes and Helium ion technology.

Carl Zeiss SMT recently celebrated, with SII NanoTechnology (SIINT), a subsidiary of Seiko Instruments Inc., the opening of the new Yokohama Nanotechnology Demonstration Center. The Center features the electron and ion beam products of both companies, namely Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM), Focused Ion Beam systems (FIB), FIB-SEM Hybrid Systems as well as Transmission Electron Microscopes (TEM).

The Nanotechnology Demonstration Center is seen as a further step for both companies to jointly becoming the global leader for enabling nanotechnology solutions by implementing the global strategic alliance of Carl Zeiss SMT and SIINT announced in March 2006. In January 2006, SIINT started to sell and service products of Carl Zeiss SMT´s Nano Technology Systems division (NTS) in Japan. Joint product developments have followed.