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 2,400 employees, had revenues of $632.2 million in 2009. Headquartered in San Jose, California, Novellus conducts its manufacturing operations primarily in Oregon, and maintains offices in 15 countries worldwide. Novellus is ranked among the top 10 semiconductor equipment companies in the world.

 

A Broad Product and Technology Portfolio

The fabrication of integrated circuits requires a number of complex and repetitive processing steps. Through its six business units Novellus offers a broad and diverse product portfolio in the manufacturing process areas of deposition and surface preparation.

 

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
    (Concept Two SEQUEL® Express, VECTOR®, VECTOR Express, VECTOR Express AHM, VECTOR Extreme, VECTOR Extreme AHM, SOLA, VECTOR 3D)
  • GapFill Business Unit: High Density Plasma(HDP) CVD Products
    (Concept Two SPEED®, Concept Three SPEED, SPEED NExT, SPEED Max)
  • Direct Metals Business Unit: Metal CVD Products
    (Concept Two ALTUS®, Concept Three ALTUS, 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, INOVA 3D)

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, SABRE Excel, SABRE 3D)

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® Express, G400®, GxT, G3D®)