Carl Zeiss SMT transfers product line to business partner HSEB (Dresden)
Oberkochen, Germany. In course of its further strategic focussing and global market positioning, the Semiconductor Metrology Systems Division (SMS) of Carl Zeiss SMT has transferred its product line for manual optical wafer inspection to its long-term strategic partner HSEB GmbH. Effective June 2004, the Dresden, Germany based HSEB GmbH with extended core competencies in optical macro inspection and 300 mm automated wafer handling has assumed global responsibility for development, manufacture, sales and service of SMS's successful product line for optical UV and DUV manual wafer inspection.
For Dr. Hermann Gerlinger, CEO of Carl Zeiss SMT AG, the transfer of the product line is of major strategic importance: “The transfer of our successful wafer inspection product line serves to focus our total product portfolio on product groups with a high synergetic potential in core competencies within the overall Carl Zeiss SMT group. Here, in particular our cutting-edge product lines for defect printability analysis of advanced photo masks (AIMS™) combined with our prize winning electron beam based photo mask repair system MeRiT™ as well as our successful OEM partnerships in automated wafer defect detection will substantially benefit from this move. Moreover, the transfer of the manual wafer inspection products to our partner HSEB will allow us to fully focus our development efforts on next-generation lithography such as immersion technologies, thereby enabling us to continuously provide market leading products such as lithography exposure optics and AIMS™ systems for optical scanner emulation for the 65 nm and 45 nm design node”. Only recently, International Sematech and Carl Zeiss SMT have signed an agreement to support and further enable the semiconductor industry's roadmap for 193nm immersion lithography (193i) based on the AIMS™ immersion platform technology.
“Since HSEB already distributes the majority of the sub-components and shares major parts in the development of the latest Axiospect wafer inspection system, HSEB is our preferred partner to successfully continue our manual wafer inspection product line” says Dr. Oliver Kienzle, member of the board of Carl Zeiss SMS in Jena, Germany. “To further ensure the outstanding optical performance of the wafer inspection product line, Carl Zeiss will continue to provide the optical key components to the systems to be assembled by HSEB in the future” explains Kienzle. “Key personnel for sales, service and system integration have been transferred from Carl Zeiss SMS to HSEB to ensure a smooth transition of the product line. We therefore are convinced that the transfer of our product line will effectively have no impact on business continuity and our highly-valued global customer relationships for manual wafer inspection equipment.” |  HSEB |