Semiconductor manufacturing equipment makers Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron to merge

Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron (TEL) will merge into a new company that will have a market value of $29 billion. Applied shareholders will own approximately 68% of the new company and Tokyo Electron shareholders approximately 32%. The new company name is still unknown. Applied Materials is considered to be the world's leader in deposition and process control. According to Gartner, In 2012 Applied held 14.4% of the global semiconductor manufacturing equipment market and TEL had 11.1%.

Both companies are engaged with OLED manufacturing equipment. Applied Materials is offering two film deposition systems suitable for LTPS or Oxide-TFT backplane deposition (for both LCD and OLEDs panels). The AKT-PX-PECVD system (shown below) is sed to deposit LTPS films on large glass substrates (sized from 1.6 m2 to 5.7 m2). The AKT-PiVoT PVD system is used to deposit metal oxide-based TFTs (IGZO in particular).

TEL is working on OLED printing equipment together with Seiko Epson. The companies signed an agreement in 2011 to jointly-develop OLED display manufacturing technology that will integrate Epson's inkjet printing method and TEL's production equipment.

 
Posted: Sep 29,2013 by Ron Mertens