Category Archives: Device Architecture

Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) today announced that the European Commission and the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) authorized the acquisition by Qualcomm River Holdings B.V., an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm, of NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ: NXPI).  The acquisition has now received 8 of the 9 approvals around the world, with China remaining.

Qualcomm cooperated with the Commission and the KFTC to obtain authorization, and committed to exclude certain near-field communication (NFC) patents from the proposed transaction and ensure that NXP licenses those patents to third parties.  Qualcomm also committed not to assert the NFC patents it will acquire from NXP and maintain interoperability between Qualcomm’s baseband chipsets and NXP’s NFC chips and rivals baseband chipsets and NFC chips.  Qualcomm also will continue to offer a license to MIFARE on terms commensurate with those offered by NXP today.

“We are pleased that both the European Commission and the Korean Fair Trade Commission have granted authorization of the NXP acquisition, and we are optimistic that China will expeditiously grant its clearance” said Steve Mollenkopf, Chief Executive Officer, Qualcomm Incorporated. “Acquiring NXP is complementary to Qualcomm’s global portfolio, providing tremendous scale in automotive, IoT, security and networking and will greatly accelerate our ability to execute and create value in new and adjacent opportunities.”

Sometimes it pays to be two-dimensional. The merits of graphene, a 2D sheet of carbon atoms, are well established. In its wake have followed a host of “post-graphene materials” – structural analogues of graphene made of other elements like silicon or germanium.

Now, an international research team led by Nagoya University (Japan) involving Aix-Marseille University (France), the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg (Germany) and the University of the Basque country (Spain) has unveiled the first truly planar sample of stanene: single sheets of tin (Sn) atoms. Planar stanene is hotly tipped as an extraordinary electrical conductor for high technology.

High-resolution STM image of stanene prepared on a Ag2Sn surface alloy. The honeycomb stanene structure model is superimposed. Credit: Junji Yuhara

High-resolution STM image of stanene prepared on a Ag2Sn surface alloy. The honeycomb stanene structure model is superimposed. Credit: Junji Yuhara

Just as graphene differs from ordinary graphite, so does stanene behave very differently to humble tin in bulk form. Because of relatively strong spin-orbit interactions for electrons in heavy elements, single-layer tin is predicted to be a “topological insulator,” also known as a quantum spin Hall (QSH) insulator. Materials in this remarkable class are electrically insulating in their interiors, but have highly conductive surfaces/edges. This, in theory, makes a single-layered topological insulator an ideal wiring material for nanoelectronics. Moreover, the highly conductive channels at the edge of these materials can carry special chiral currents with spins locked with transport directions, which makes them also very appealing for spintronics applications.

In previous studies, where stanene was grown on substrates of bismuth telluride or antimony, the tin layers turned out to be highly buckled and relatively inhomogeneous. The Nagoya team instead chose silver (Ag) as their host – specifically, the Ag(111) crystal facet, whose lattice constant is slightly larger than that of the freestanding stanene, leading to the formation of flattened tin monolayer in a large area, one step closer to the scalable industrial applications.

Individual tin atoms were slowly deposited onto silver, known as epitaxial growth. Crucially, the stanene layer did not form directly on top of the silver surface. Instead, as shown by core-level spectroscopy, the first step was the formation of a surface alloy (Ag2Sn) between the two species. Then, another round of tin deposition produced a layer of pure, highly crystalline stanene atop the alloy. Tunneling microscopy shows striking images of a honeycomb lattice of tin atoms, illustrating the hexagonal structure of stanene.

The alloy guaranteed the flatness of the tin layer, as confirmed by density-functional theory calculations. Junji Yuhara, lead author of an article by the team published in 2D Materials, explains: “Stanene follows the crystalline periodicity of the Ag2Sn surface alloy. Therefore, instead of buckling as it would in isolation, the stanene layer flattens out – at the cost of a slight strain – to maximize contact with the alloy beneath.” This mutual stabilization between stanene and host not only keeps the stanene layers impeccably flat, but lets them grow to impressive sizes of around 5,000 square nanometers.

Planar stanene has exciting prospects in electronics and computing. “The QSH effect is rather delicate, and most topological insulators only show it at low temperatures”, according to project team leader Guy Le Lay at Aix-Marseille University. “However, stanene is predicted to adopt a QSH state even at room temperature and above, especially when functionalized with other elements. In the future, we hope to see stanene partnered up with silicene in computer circuitry. That combination could drastically speed up computational efficiency, even compared with the current cutting-edge technology.”

Northwestern University researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind technique for creating entirely new classes of optical materials and devices that could lead to light bending and cloaking devices — news to make the ears of Star Trek’s Spock perk up.

Using DNA as a key tool, the interdisciplinary team took gold nanoparticles of different sizes and shapes and arranged them in two and three dimensions to form optically active superlattices. Structures with specific configurations could be programmed through choice of particle type and both DNA-pattern and sequence to exhibit almost any color across the visible spectrum, the scientists report.

“Architecture is everything when designing new materials, and we now have a new way to precisely control particle architectures over large areas,” said Chad A. Mirkin, the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern. “Chemists and physicists will be able to build an almost infinite number of new structures with all sorts of interesting properties. These structures cannot be made by any known technique.”

The technique combines an old fabrication method — top-down lithography, the same method used to make computer chips — with a new one — programmable self-assembly driven by DNA. The Northwestern team is the first to combine the two to achieve individual particle control in three dimensions.

The study was published online by the journal Science today (Jan. 18). Mirkin and Vinayak P. Dravid and Koray Aydin, both professors in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, are co-corresponding authors.

Scientists will be able to use the powerful and flexible technique to build metamaterials — materials not found in nature — for a range of applications including sensors for medical and environmental uses.

The researchers used a combination of numerical simulations and optical spectroscopy techniques to identify particular nanoparticle superlattices that absorb specific wavelengths of visible light. The DNA-modified nanoparticles — gold in this case — are positioned on a pre-patterned template made of complementary DNA. Stacks of structures can be made by introducing a second and then a third DNA-modified particle with DNA that is complementary to the subsequent layers.

In addition to being unusual architectures, these materials are stimuli-responsive: the DNA strands that hold them together change in length when exposed to new environments, such as solutions of ethanol that vary in concentration. The change in DNA length, the researchers found, resulted in a change of color from black to red to green, providing extreme tunability of optical properties.

“Tuning the optical properties of metamaterials is a significant challenge, and our study achieves one of the highest tunability ranges achieved to date in optical metamaterials,” said Aydin, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at McCormick.

“Our novel metamaterial platform — enabled by precise and extreme control of gold nanoparticle shape, size and spacing — holds significant promise for next-generation optical metamaterials and metasurfaces,” Aydin said.

The study describes a new way to organize nanoparticles in two and three dimensions. The researchers used lithography methods to drill tiny holes — only one nanoparticle wide — in a polymer resist, creating “landing pads” for nanoparticle components modified with strands of DNA. The landing pads are essential, Mirkin said, since they keep the structures that are grown vertical.

The nanoscopic landing pads are modified with one sequence of DNA, and the gold nanoparticles are modified with complementary DNA. By alternating nanoparticles with complementary DNA, the researchers built nanoparticle stacks with tremendous positional control and over a large area. The particles can be different sizes and shapes (spheres, cubes and disks, for example).

“This approach can be used to build periodic lattices from optically active particles, such as gold, silver and any other material that can be modified with DNA, with extraordinary nanoscale precision,” said Mirkin, director of Northwestern’s International Institute for Nanotechnology.

Mirkin also is a professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and professor of chemical and biological engineering, biomedical engineering and materials science and engineering in the McCormick School.

The success of the reported DNA programmable assembly required expertise with hybrid (soft-hard) materials and exquisite nanopatterning and lithographic capabilities to achieve the requisite spatial resolution, definition and fidelity across large substrate areas. The project team turned to Dravid, a longtime collaborator of Mirkin’s who specializes in nanopatterning, advanced microscopy and characterization of soft, hard and hybrid nanostructures.

Dravid contributed his expertise and assisted in designing the nanopatterning and lithography strategy and the associated characterization of the new exotic structures. He is the Abraham Harris Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in McCormick and the founding director of the NUANCE center, which houses the advanced patterning, lithography and characterization used in the DNA-programmed structures.

The historic flood of merger and acquisition agreements that swept through the semiconductor industry in 2015 and 2016 slowed significantly in 2017, but the total value of M&A deals reached in the year was still more than twice the annual average in the first half of this decade, according to IC Insights’ new 2018 McClean Report, which becomes available this month.  Subscribers to The McClean Report can attend one of the upcoming half-day seminars (January 23 in Scottsdale, AZ; January 25 in Sunnyvale, CA; and January 30 in Boston, MA) that discuss the highlights of the report free of charge.

In 2017, about two dozen acquisition agreements were reached for semiconductor companies, business units, product lines, and related assets with a combined value of $27.7 billion compared to the record-high $107.3 billion set in 2015 and the $99.8 billion total in 2016 (Figure 1).  Prior to the explosion of semiconductor acquisitions that erupted several years ago, M&A agreements in the chip industry had a total annual average value of about $12.6 billion between 2010 and 2015.

Figure 1

Figure 1

Two large acquisition agreements accounted for 87% of the M&A total in 2017, and without them, the year would have been subpar in terms of the typical annual value of announced transactions.  The falloff in the value of semiconductor acquisition agreements in 2017 suggests that the feverish pace of M&A deals is finally cooling off.  M&A mania erupted in 2015 when semiconductor acquisitions accelerated because a growing number of companies began buying other chip businesses to offset slow growth rates in major end-use applications (such as smartphones, PCs, and tablets) and to expand their reach into huge new market opportunities, like the Internet of Things (IoT), wearable systems, and highly “intelligent” embedded electronics, including the growing amount of automated driver-assist capabilities in new cars and fully autonomous vehicles in the not-so-distant future.

With the number of acquisition targets shrinking and the task of merging operations together growing, industry consolidation through M&A transactions decelerated in 2017.  Regulatory reviews of planned mergers by government agencies in Europe, the U.S., and China have also slowed the pace of large semiconductor acquisitions.

One of the big differences between semiconductor M&A in 2017 and the two prior years was that far fewer megadeals were announced.  In 2017, only two acquisition agreements exceeded $1 billion in value (the $18 billion deal for Toshiba’s memory business and Marvell’s planned $6 billion purchase of Cavium).  Ten semiconductor acquisition agreements in 2015 exceeded $1 billion and seven in 2016 were valued over $1 billion.  The two large acquisition agreements in 2017 pushed the average value of semiconductor M&A pacts to $1.3 billion.  Without those megadeals, the average would have been just $185 million last year. The average value of 22 semiconductor acquisition agreements struck in 2015 was $4.9 billion.  In 2016, the average for 29 M&A agreements was $3.4 billion, based on data compiled by IC Insights.

SkyWater Technology Foundry, the industry’s most advanced U.S.-based and U.S.-owned trusted foundry, announced today that it has appointed Steve Wold as Chief Financial Officer. Steve has more than 25 years of leadership experience, holding a variety of senior corporate finance roles. He brings a rich background to the company in capital markets, including equity, corporate financing and recapitalizations, and risk management. Steve succeeds Bart Zibrowski, who will move on to the role of Vice-Chairman for the company.

“As we complete our foundry transformation in 2018, I am delighted to welcome Steve Wold to SkyWater as our new CFO,” said Thomas Sonderman, President, SkyWater Technology Foundry. “With his background in high-performance growth organizations, Steve is ideally suited to help us deliver on our long-term vision. I’d also like to thank Bart Zibrowski for the tremendous job he did in putting a strong foundation in place for our finance organization over the last year as we created the company.” 

Steve comes to SkyWater Technology Foundry after most recently serving as a key member of the leadership team of Arctic Cat Inc. (formerly ACAT – NASDAQ), where he was instrumental in completing the sale of the company to Textron Inc. in 2017. Prior to that, he was at Orbital ATK (OA – NYSE) for 18 years, where he was focused on transforming processes, change management, and driving operational efficiencies, as the company grew from approximately $1 billion to over $5 billion in revenue. Steve began his career as a CPA with Deloitte Audit and Assurance for over 7 years, where he focused on providing services to both publicly traded and privately held manufacturing entities. He holds a Bachelor of Accountancy from the University of North Dakota, and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Minnesota Society of CPAs. 

SkyWater is a U.S.-based technology foundry, specializing in the development and manufacturing of a wide variety of differentiated semiconductor manufacturing solutions.

Engineers worldwide have been developing alternative ways to provide greater memory storage capacity on even smaller computer chips. Previous research into two-dimensional atomic sheets for memory storage has failed to uncover their potential — until now.

A team of electrical engineers at The University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with Peking University scientists, has developed the thinnest memory storage device with dense memory capacity, paving the way for faster, smaller and smarter computer chips for everything from consumer electronics to big data to brain-inspired computing.

Illustration of a voltage-induced memory effect in monolayer nanomaterials, which layer to create "atomristors," the thinnest memory storage device that could lead to faster, smaller and smarter computer chips. Credit: Cockrell School of Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin

Illustration of a voltage-induced memory effect in monolayer nanomaterials, which layer to create “atomristors,” the thinnest memory storage device that could lead to faster, smaller and smarter computer chips. Credit: Cockrell School of Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin

“For a long time, the consensus was that it wasn’t possible to make memory devices from materials that were only one atomic layer thick,” said Deji Akinwande, associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “With our new ‘atomristors,’ we have shown it is indeed possible.”

Made from 2-D nanomaterials, the “atomristors” — a term Akinwande coined — improve upon memristors, an emerging memory storage technology with lower memory scalability. He and his team published their findings in the January issue of Nano Letters.

“Atomristors will allow for the advancement of Moore’s Law at the system level by enabling the 3-D integration of nanoscale memory with nanoscale transistors on the same chip for advanced computing systems,” Akinwande said.

Memory storage and transistors have, to date, always been separate components on a microchip, but atomristors combine both functions on a single, more efficient computer system. By using metallic atomic sheets (graphene) as electrodes and semiconducting atomic sheets (molybdenum sulfide) as the active layer, the entire memory cell is a sandwich about 1.5 nanometers thick, which makes it possible to densely pack atomristors layer by layer in a plane. This is a substantial advantage over conventional flash memory, which occupies far larger space. In addition, the thinness allows for faster and more efficient electric current flow.

Given their size, capacity and integration flexibility, atomristors can be packed together to make advanced 3-D chips that are crucial to the successful development of brain-inspired computing. One of the greatest challenges in this burgeoning field of engineering is how to make a memory architecture with 3-D connections akin to those found in the human brain.

“The sheer density of memory storage that can be made possible by layering these synthetic atomic sheets onto each other, coupled with integrated transistor design, means we can potentially make computers that learn and remember the same way our brains do,” Akinwande said.

The research team also discovered another unique application for the technology. In existing ubiquitous devices such as smartphones and tablets, radio frequency switches are used to connect incoming signals from the antenna to one of the many wireless communication bands in order for different parts of a device to communicate and cooperate with one another. This activity can significantly affect a smartphone’s battery life.

The atomristors are the smallest radio frequency memory switches to be demonstrated with no DC battery consumption, which can ultimately lead to longer battery life.

“Overall, we feel that this discovery has real commercialization value as it won’t disrupt existing technologies,” Akinwande said. “Rather, it has been designed to complement and integrate with the silicon chips already in use in modern tech devices.”

Scientists used spiraling X-rays at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) to observe, for the first time, a property that gives handedness to swirling electric patterns – dubbed polar vortices – in a synthetically layered material.

This property, also known as chirality, potentially opens up a new way to store data by controlling the left- or right-handedness in the material’s array in much the same way magnetic materials are manipulated to store data as ones or zeros in a computer’s memory.

Researchers said the behavior also could be explored for coupling to magnetic or optical (light-based) devices, which could allow better control via electrical switching.

Chirality is present in many forms and at many scales, from the spiral-staircase design of our own DNA to the spin and drift of spiral galaxies; it can even determine whether a molecule acts as a medicine or a poison in our bodies.

A molecular compound known as d-glucose, for example, which is an essential ingredient for human life as a form of sugar, exhibits right-handedness. Its left-handed counterpart, l-glucose, though, is not useful in human biology.

“Chirality hadn’t been seen before in this electric structure,” said Elke Arenholz, a senior staff scientist at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS), which is home to the X-rays that were key to the study. The study was published online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The experiments can distinguish between left-handed chirality and right-handed chirality in the samples’ vortices. “This offers new opportunities for fundamentally new science, with the potential to open up applications,” she said.

“Imagine that one could convert a right-handed form of a molecule to its left-handed form by applying an electric field, or artificially engineer a material with a particular chirality,” said Ramamoorthy Ramesh, a faculty senior scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and associate laboratory director of the Lab’s Energy Technologies Area, who co-led the latest study.

Ramesh, who is also a professor of materials science and physics at UC Berkeley, custom-made the novel materials at UC Berkeley.

Padraic Shafer, a research scientist at the ALS and the lead author of the study, worked with Arenholz to carry out the X-ray experiments that revealed the chirality of the material.

The samples included a layer of lead titanate (PbTiO3) and a layer of strontium titanate (SrTiO3) sandwiched together in an alternating pattern to form a material known as a superlattice. The materials have also been studied for their tunable electrical properties that make them candidates for components in precise sensors and for other uses.

Neither of the two compounds show any handedness by themselves, but when they were combined into the precisely layered superlattice, they developed the swirling vortex structures that exhibited chirality.

“Chirality may have additional functionality,” Shafer said, when compared to devices that use magnetic fields to rearrange the magnetic structure of the material.

The electronic patterns in the material that were studied at the ALS were first revealed using a powerful electron microscope at Berkeley Lab’s National Center for Electron Microscopy, a part of the Lab’s Molecular Foundry, though it took a specialized X-ray technique to identify their chirality.

“The X-ray measurements had to be performed in extreme geometries that can’t be done by most experimental equipment,” Shafer said, using a technique known as resonant soft X-ray diffraction that probes periodic nanometer-scale details in their electronic structure and properties.

Spiraling forms of X-rays, known as circularly polarized X-rays, allowed researchers to measure both left-handed and right-handed chirality in the samples.

Arenholz, who is also a faculty member of the UC Berkeley Department of Materials Science & Engineering, added, “It took a lot of time to understand the results, and a lot of modeling and discussions.” Theorists at the University of Cantabria in Spain and their network of computational experts performed calculations of the vortex structures that aided in the interpretation of the X-ray data.

The same science team is pursuing studies of other types and combinations of materials to test the effects on chirality and other properties.

“There is a wide class of materials that could be substituted,” Shafer said, “and there is the hope that the layers could be replaced with even higher functionality materials.”

Researchers also plan to test whether there are new ways to control the chirality in these layered materials, such as by combining materials that have electrically switchable properties with those that exhibit magnetically switchable properties.

“Since we know so much about magnetic structures,” Arenholz said, “we could think of using this well-known connection with magnetism to implement this newly discovered property into devices.”

By Dan Tracy and Ji-Won Cho, SEMI

2017 proved to be record-setting year for the semiconductor industry. According to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS), worldwide semiconductor market will have grown 20 percent, exceeding $400 billion for the first time. Among all major product segments, memory is the strongest, with sales are on track to grow 60 percent year-over-year, contributing to 30 percent of worldwide semiconductor sales in 2017. The consensus is that the growth momentum in memory will continue in 2018, driven by stable market demand and a favorable pricing environment.

Korean memory makers are the biggest beneficiaries of this memory super cycle. According to the Korea International Trade Association (KITA), the memory export value from Korea grew 86 percent through November 2017 compared to a year earlier, indicating that Korean memory makers are gaining more market share. On the supply side of the market, both Samsung and SK Hynix saw record high capital expenditures in 2017, contributing to the revenue surge from Korean suppliers. The spending spree is expected to continue in 2018. Together, Samsung and SK Hynix are forecast to invest over $20 billion in fab tools worldwide in 2018. (Track fab projects in detail with the SEMI World Fab Forecast or SEMI FabView databases).

WFF-Dec2017-chart

Samsung’s anchor project in 2018 is the ramp of its new Fab P1 phase 2 line in Pyeongtaek. Samsung plans to add new 3D NAND as well as DRAM capacity at this fab, fortifying its leading position in memory market. Beyond 2018, Samsung’s Xian phase 2 plan is also underway for future expansion.

SK Hynix, on the other hand, will ramp up M14 fab in 2018, adding new capacity for both 3D NAND and DRAM. In the meantime, SK Hynix is building a new fab, M15, in Cheongju, Korea, for 3D NAND and Fab C3 in Wuxi, China, for DRAM.

Both of these leading memory makers plan to ride this memory cycle and intend to vault ahead of the competition. Future demand for 3D NAND will continue to be the strongest, driving new fab projects in Korea now and later in China. Nevertheless, DRAM supply will also see new capacity coming online this year, followed by rare new fab projects. Memory not only accounts for a major portion of worldwide semiconductor sales but will also propel the investment momentum in the coming years.

SEMICON Korea 2018

The strong memory growth sets the stage for SEMICON Korea, January 31 through February 2 in Seoul. The largest microelectronics event in Korea, with over 40,000 attendees expected, SEMICON Korea will focus on enabling participants to “Connect, Collaborate, and Innovate.”

Key SEMICON Korea highlights include:

  • The 1,919 booths are sold out as major equipment, materials, and subsystem/parts companies exhibit their new products and technology solutions at the show.
  • Industry giants including Samsung, Micron, Intel, Toshiba, Sony, SK Hynix and LAM Research will connect with Korean equipment, materials and subsystems/parts manufacturers through the Supplier Search Program.
  • Participation by engineers is expected to be strong this year, after more than 10,000 engineers from​ Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and DB Hitek attended SEMICON Korea 2017.

Major SEMICON Korea programs, including the following, will provide key insights into the Korea electronics manufacturing ecosystem:

  • Smart Automotive Forum
  • Smart Manufacturing Forum
  • Test Forum
  • SEMI Technology Symposium
  • Market Seminar

For a complete schedule of programs, visit www.semiconkorea.org/en/agenda-glance.

Everspin Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRAM), a developer and manufacturer of discrete and embedded MRAM, today announced the Company recorded revenue for its first 40nm 256Mb STT-MRAM products in the fourth quarter of 2017 and is in the process of ramping its volume production in 2018. This achievement represents an important milestone for STT-MRAM as it is the enabling step for bringing the persistent memory to market.

STT-MRAM is a significant advancement in magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) as the densities of this persistent memory technology open up new market opportunities beyond where MRAM has been deployed previously. While there are several companies committed to the MRAM market today, Everspin has the advantage of being the first to reach a volume production for STT-MRAM as well as the only company that is executing on both discrete and embedded MRAM (eMRAM) solutions. The 256Mb STT-MRAM also employs an innovative ST-DDR3 interface, unlocking performance previously unattainable in legacy MRAM components.

“Our 256Mb STT-MRAM is the first ever perpendicular MTJ STT-MRAM entering mass production. This is both a testament to the technical strength of Everspin’s team in design and technology as well as the joint productization strength provided by the collaboration with GLOBALFOUNDRIES,” said Kevin Conley, President and CEO of Everspin Technologies. “This is a bellwether milestone in the evolution of this disruptive technology and we are very excited about the advantages that the capacity and performance of this product brings to our customers.”

“GLOBALFOUNDRIES is excited to see the first STT-MRAM from the Everspin partnership reaching production. The movement of discrete STT-MRAM to volume production is an important milestone on the way to enabling our risk production release of 22FDX eMRAM for GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ customers later this year,” said Dave Eggleston, Vice President of Embedded Memory, GLOBALFOUNDRIES.

Kevin Conley, President and CEO, and Jeff Winzeler, CFO, will present tomorrow at Needham & Company’s 20th Annual Growth Conference from 12:50 – 1:30PM EST at the Lotte New York Palace Hotel. Management will be available to meet with investors at the conference. Copies of any presentation materials will be made available on www.Everspin.com.

ASML Holding N.V. (ASML) today announces that the Supervisory Board intends to appoint Roger Dassen as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to the Board of Management, subject to notification of the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders scheduled for April 25, 2018. Dassen succeeds Wolfgang Nickl who will leave ASML at the end of April (as announced on 12 September 2017). Roger Dassen (age 52) will join ASML on June 1, 2018.

Roger Dassen is the Global Vice Chairman, Risk, Regulatory, and Public Policy of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (DTTL). In this capacity, he also serves as the Global Chief Ethics Officer and a member of the DTTL Executive. Dassen is a former CEO of Deloitte Netherlands. He has been a Deloitte Netherlands audit partner since 1996 and has served as advisory partner and/or global LCSP for a number of the firm’s largest clients.

Dassen is professor of auditing at the Free University of Amsterdam. He has a master’s degree in economics and business administration, and a PhD in business and economics from the University of Maastricht.

“We are very pleased to have Roger Dassen join us as our CFO. We welcome his deep financial expertise and broad managerial experience. The Board of Management is confident that he will quickly integrate into our senior management team to support ASML in delivering our company’s growth objectives,” said Peter Wennink, President and Chief Executive Officer at ASML.

ASML is a manufacturer of chip-making equipment.