ABSTRACT
After a few years of hanging on during a significant industrywide sales slump, it seemed the “dreams” for all of us tied to the semiconductor equipment industry were coming true. For some time, the chip-making equipment industry had been developing new technology around etching on 300-mm diameter silicon wafers instead of the 200-mm diameter wafers that had been the standard. The chip makers (e.g., AMD, HewlettPackard, IBM, and Intel) were preparing to invest and would receive many benefits, like significant cost savings and higher yields, from the 300-mm advances. But, there were also disadvantages, like the cost of the new tooling, the time-consuming and complex requalification of existing part numbers on the new tools, more bowing and bending with the 300mm wafers, and various other problems that come along with new technology. We had been producing some prototype parts for the 300-mm wafer machines and were now starting to see a heightened level of activity to get some of this new technology into production.
