June 12, 2008 — Tegal Corporation, designer and manufacturer of plasma etch and deposition systems used in the production of integrated circuits, MEMS, and nanotechnology devices, has received an order for a Tegal 6500 HRe plasma etch tool from SVTC Technologies, in San Jose, California. The Tegal system will ship this quarter, and will be installed in SVTC’s 200mm development foundry in San Jose. SVTC serves the novel memory and transistor market, along with the MEMS/MOEMS, photovoltaics, biotechnology, image sensors and high-voltage markets.

Tegal also announced, as part of the plasma etch equipment order, that Tegal and SVTC are working together on process recipe development for these applications.

“With the Tegal tool, we can offer even more significant time-to-market advantages for the specialized materials, processes, and integration requirements of advanced memory device development and productization,” says Wilbur Catabay, vice president of technology for SVTC. “In addition, the 6500 platform will be important for other customers who need advanced plasma etch capabilities. We see Tegal as our preferred strategic etch supplier for these important applications.”

The Tegal 6500 system is a high-density plasma etch tool featuring the HRe capacitively coupled plasma etch reactor, and Tegal’s patented dual-frequency RF power technology and magnetic plasma confinement. Together with its on-board photoresist strip module and spin-rinse-dry station, the Tegal system is a critical enabler for etching the metal electrodes and storage cell materials used in advanced memory fabrication, as well as other ferroelectric, magnetic, high-K dielectric, compound semiconductor, and interconnect materials found in the MEMS/MOEMS, photovoltaic, bio-tech and hi-voltage markets.

Recently, Tegal has also sold plasma etch tools to WESI Technology and Penn State.