Tegal Corp

Main Activity in Nanotechnology

Material Manufacturer

About Company

Tegal Corporation designs, manufactures, markets and services plasma etch and deposition systems that enable the production of IC memory and related microelectronics devices used in personal computers, wireless voice and data telecommunications, radio frequency identification devices (RFID), smart cards, data storage and nano-scale actuators. Etching and deposition constitute two of the principal IC and related device production process steps and each must be performed numerous times in the production of such devices.

We were formed in December 1989 to acquire the operations of the former Tegal Corporation, a division of Motorola, Inc. Our predecessor company was founded in 1972 and acquired by Motorola in 1978. We completed our initial public offering in October 1995.

On August 30, 2002, we acquired all of the outstanding common stock of Sputtered Films, Incorporated (SFI), a privately held California corporation. Sputtered Films is a leader in the design, manufacture and service of high performance physical vapor deposition (PVD) sputtering systems for the semiconductor and semiconductor packaging industry. SFI was founded in 1967 with the development of the S-Gun, core technology of the acquired company.

On November 11, 2003, we acquired substantially all of the assets and certain liabilities of Simplus Systems Corporation, a development stage company. Simplus had developed a deposition cluster tool and certain patented processes for barrier, copper seed and high-K dielectric applications. Simplus had coined the term "nano-layer deposition" or "NLD" to describe its unique approach to chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Tegal is continuing to develop these NLD processes and related tools, and is in the process of marketing them to a limited number of key customers and joint development partners.

On May 28, 2004, Tegal purchased substantially all of the assets and assumed certain liabilities of First Derivative Systems, Inc. (FDSI), a privately held development stage company based in Goleta, CA, founded in 1999 as a spin-off of Sputtered Films, Inc. FDSI had developed a high-throughput, low cost-of-ownership PVD system with highly differentiated technology for leading edge memory and logic device production on 200 and 300 millimeter wafers.