Company Profile

Novellus Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: NVLS) is a leading provider of advanced process equipment for the global semiconductor industry. The company provides innovative products and technologies that meet the increasingly complex and demanding needs of the world’s largest chipmakers. Novellus’ tools offer leading edge technology, superior productivity and low cost of ownership—delivering value to customers where they most need it.

Novellus, an S&P 500 company, with approximately 3,500 employees, had revenues of $1.57 billion in 2007. Headquartered in San Jose, California, Novellus conducts its manufacturing operations primarily in California and Oregon, and maintains offices in 16 countries worldwide. Novellus is ranked among the top 10 semiconductor equipment companies in the world.

 

The Novellus Advantage

The semiconductor industry is undergoing rapid transformation driven by consumer demand, increasingly complex technologies, and lower-priced devices. Customers need dependable suppliers who can partner with them to meet their technical and operational challenges. Today’s manufacturing equipment must be cost effective while keeping pace with the relentless push to ever smaller and faster device geometries. In an era when the semiconductor manufacturing industry is consolidating, chipmakers need to reduce risk and work with equipment companies that they know will be there for the long term. All this reinforces the need for the equipment industry to provide VALUE, which Novellus defines as a combination of innovative technologies, reduced operating costs, and status as a trusted supplier.

 

A Broad Product and Technology Portfolio

The fabrication of integrated circuits requires a number of complex and repetitive processing steps. Through its nine business units Novellus offers a broad and diverse product portfolio in the manufacturing process areas of (I) deposition, (II) surface preparation and (III) chemical mechanical planarization.

  • Deposition Technologies

    Novellus’ historical strength is rooted in deposition products, where it has consistently maintained a leadership position. Its products address a number of different deposition technologies:

    Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD)

    In the CVD process, manufacturers place wafers in a reaction chamber, introduce a variety of pure and precisely metered gases into the chamber, and then add some form of energy to activate a chemical reaction that deposits a film on the wafer. The CVD process is the traditional method used to deposit dielectric films on wafers. Manufacturers also use CVD to deposit conductive metal layers, particularly tungsten.

    • PECVD Business Unit: Plasma Enhanced CVD Systems
      (SEQUEL Express® , VECTOR®, VECTOR Express™, VECTOR Extreme™ , SOLA™ )
    • GapFill Business Unit: High Density Plasma(HDP) CVD Products
      (SPEED®, SPEED NExT™, SPEED Max™)
    • Direct Metals Business Unit: Metal CVD Products
      (ALTUS®, ALTUS DirectFill™, ALTUS Max™)

    Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD)

    PVD, also known as “sputtering,” is a process where ions of an inert gas such as argon are electrically accelerated in a high vacuum toward a target of pure metal, such as tantalum or copper. Upon impact, the argon ions sputter off the target material, which is then deposited as a thin film on the silicon wafer. PVD processes are used to create the barrier and seed layers in interconnect applications.

    • Integrated Metals Business Unit
      (INOVA®, INOVA xT, INOVA NExT with HCM IONX™)

    Electrochemical Deposition (ECD)

    Novellus’ Electrofill™ products are used to build the copper primary conduction layers in advanced integrated circuits. Electrofill uses copper to fill a structure created within the circuit’s insulating layers in a manufacturing process called copper damascene. The company’s highly reliable and cost-effective Electrofill products employ liquid chemistries and electrolytic principles to deposit the copper wiring into the dielectric structure.

    • Electrofill Business Unit
      (SABRE®, SABRE xT™, SABRE NExT™, SABRE Extreme™)

  • Surface Preparation

    Photoresist strip and clean processes represent an area of semiconductor manufacturing that is becoming increasingly important with the industry’s migration to copper interconnects. Chipmakers use surface preparation products to remove photoresist and other potential contaminants from a wafer before proceeding with the next deposition step in the manufacturing process.

    • SIG Business Unit
      (GAMMA™ 2100, GAMMA 2130, GAMMA Express™, PEP Iridia™, G400™, GxT™)

  • Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP)

    CMP is a polishing process used to remove excess materials (both dielectrics and metals) after the deposition step is complete. With the shift to copper and low-k dielectrics in particular, CMP is becoming a critical enabling technology, since improper polishing can seriously damage the comparatively fragile insulation layers in the interconnect stack and lead to device reliability problems.

    • CMP Business Unit
      (MOMENTUM™, XCEDA™)

Refurbished Systems Software and Services Business

The Novellus Refurbished Systems Business supplies tools for the aluminum interconnect segment of 200-mm fabs. The group leverages Novellus’ global service and logistics channel and provides Novellus-refurbished process equipment for customers requiring an uncompromised, lower-cost manufacturing alternative to new systems.

Novellus’ Software Engineering Group and services and support infrastructure ensure 24x7 global support and flexible, custom service programs. Novellus helps customers maximize their return on investment by focusing on continuous improvement (CIP) initiatives, which enhance tool productivity, efficiency and performance.

 

A History of Innovation

Novellus was founded in 1984 to deliver high-productivity deposition products and processes to the semiconductor industry. The company established its legacy of innovation in 1987 with the introduction of the Concept One® dielectric deposition system, which pioneered a new concept in plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) that provided chipmakers with unprecedented productivity, reliability and cost-of-ownership advantages. In 1991, Novellus introduced the Concept Two® platform—a modular, integrated production system capable of depositing both dielectric and conductive metal layers by combining one or more processing chambers with a common, automated robotic wafer handler. And in 1997, Novellus introduced the Concept Three™ platform, which built on the foundation of its predecessors to offer superior throughput in 300mm wafer-manufacturing applications.

Novellus’ historical leadership position in the CVD marketplace was underscored by such product breakthroughs as the 1994 introduction of Concept Two ALTUS®—which set the standard for the deposition of tungsten vias in building logic devices—and the 1996 introduction of SPEED®, a major advance in dielectric gap fill of tall and narrow trenches. SPEED secured Novellus’ leadership in the high-density plasma (HDP) CVD market, where it continues to maintain a significant market share. In 1997, Novellus moved beyond its historical focus on CVD applications by acquiring Varian Associates’ Thin Film Systems Business. This acquisition propelled the company into the physical vapor deposition (PVD) market, where products are used to create liner/barrier and conductive aluminum layers in an aluminum manufacturing process, as well as to provide the underlying barrier/seed foundation for copper conductive layers in a copper damascene manufacturing sequence.

Novellus has been at the forefront of the industry’s transition to copper and low-k dielectric manufacturing since these technologies began to assert themselves in the late 1990s. In 1998, Novellus entered the electrochemical deposition (ECD) market with the introduction of our breakthrough SABRE® copper Electrofill system, the most reliable and technologically advanced copper ECD system available on the market today, as well as the manufacturing production leader.

In recognition of the increasing importance of the interplay between copper, low-k dielectrics and related interconnect technologies, Novellus engaged in a pair of corporate acquisitions that extended the company’s reach into two new markets beyond deposition. The acquisition of Gasonics International in 2001 immediately established Novellus with a leadership position in the market for surface preparation products, and the 2002 acquisition of SpeedFam-IPEC enabled the company to enter the chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) market.

Novellus' tradition of using innovative technologies to create products that enhance productivity and lower cost of ownership continues with the launch of ALTUS DirectFill in 2004, the launch of the SOLA UVTP system in 2005, SABRE Extreme and GAMMA Express in Jul 2006, and the VECTOR Express and VECTOR Extreme in 2007.