Europe

07/01/1998

Europe

Johnson Matthey is investing approximately 3 million UK pounds ($5 million) to add manufacturing and technical support to its 22,000-ft2 Widnes facility, which is now slated to become the company`s primary electronic materials production site in Europe. The work is part of an overall reorganization of the company`s electronic materials business in Europe. Construction will begin this month; the new facility is expected to be operational by the spring of 1999.

Trikon Technologies, Newport, Wales, has sold another nonexclusive license for its MORI source etch technology, this time to Lam Research Corp., and is proposing a plan that aims to free the company from debt. Last year, Trikon sold the first license to Applied Materials in a deal valued at $30 million. Under the agreement with Lam, Lam will pay Trikon approximately $20 million. Lam has already paid $9 million to execute the license, and another $1 million will be paid during the second quarter. The remaining $10 million consists of contingent payments and royalties. Trikon has also proposed a restructuring and recapitalization of its balance sheet.

AlliedSignal Inc., Morris Township, NJ, has sold its European Laminates manufacturing operations to Cookson Electronics, a division of Cookson Group plc, including certain assets of AlliedSignal Laminate Systems GmbH, Germany; AlliedSignal Europe N.V., Belgium; AlliedSignal Laminate Systems SA, France; and AlliedSignal Ltd., UK. AlliedSignal Electronic Materials president Geoff Wild explained that the sale will allow the company to focus resources in its North American and Asian markets.

Manuela Boin Scientific Software, Tomerdingen, Germany, has begun shipment of SE-MAP, an OEM version of Wafermap metrology software. SE-MAP will be used to collect, analyze, and visualize measurements on metrology equipment by SOPRA, a French company that produces high energy excimer lasers and ultra-high resolution spectrometers.

Siemens AG, Munich, Germany, has selected Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), Palo Alto, CA, as the semiconductor parametric test solution provider for Semiconductor300, a joint venture between Siemens and Motorola, to develop an operating technology for the manufacture of 300-mm wafers. Moving to larger wafers will allow Siemens and Motorola to produce roughly 2.5 times more chips on each wafer and to reduce costs by about 30% over existing 200-mm wafers. HP will provide HP 4071A parametric test systems and the HP semiconductor process evaluation core software for a pilot manufacturing line, including a complete turnkey solution with all hardware and test-software services and wafer prober integration.

DATACON GmbH, Radfeld/Tirol, Austria, and Kulicke and Soffa Industries Inc. (K&S), Willow Grove, PA, have entered into an exclusive distributorship agreement under which K&S will market DATACON`s PPS multichip die bonder product line outside of Europe. According to K&S, more than 34 European companies are already using the PPS series bonders, which were introduced two years ago.