SOITEC : ALTATECH'S ADVANCED INSPECTION AND METROLOGY SYSTEM SELECTED BY LEADING LED MANUFACTURER OSRAM

ALTATECH'S ADVANCED INSPECTION AND METROLOGY SYSTEM

SELECTED BY LEADING LED MANUFACTURER OSRAM

Montbonnot, France, and Regensburg, Germany, April 14, 2014 - Altatech, a subsidiary of Soitec, announced today that the company received an order for its Orion LedMax wafer inspection and metrology system from OSRAM Opto Semiconductors GmbH, one of the world's leading manufacturers of opto electronic components. OSRAM will use the tool to improve the performance, cost efficiency and yield of its LED-processing operations. The leading-edge inspection system, suitable for both volume manufacturing and R&D applications, will perform production control and new product qualification of OSRAM's epitaxial wafers used in fabricating LEDs.

Capable of inspecting wafers from four inches to eight inches in diameter, Altatech's Orion system combines the diverse capabilities of 2D inspection, defect height measurement and dark-field inspection in one platform, producing the industry's most thorough and meaningful wafer-metrology results. This state-of-the-art solution outperforms more expensive systems on today's market by generating more information than just diffracted light signature, identifying potentially critical defects amid noisy backgrounds, providing superior matching performance and reducing maintenance costs.

"After a very extensive evaluation of available options, OSRAM's selection of our Orion system confirms both the performance and the cost efficiency of our solution," said Jean-Luc Delcarri, general manager of Soitec's Altatech subsidiary. "The integrated functions of our holistic inspection systems are unique and unmatched in any other suppliers' production tools."

Orion offers the full range of inspection and metrology capabilities for front-end manufacturing process flows including incoming wafer qualification, process development and line monitoring. Proprietary Orion modules are designed to conduct front side and back side surface inspection, edge inspection, bump and through-silicon-via (TSV) metrology by detecting, counting and classifying defects on patterned and unpatterned wafers.

Altatech's line of advanced metrology and inspection products includes:

• The Orion system for inspecting LEDs on patterned and unpatterned substrates;
• The Eclipse series for front-side, back-side and edge inspection of bare substrates, epitaxial layers, silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers and glass substrates; and
• The Comet series for quality inspection of wafers mounted on film-frame or Taico rings before and after dicing.

All of these systems are designed to handle wafers from 4 inches to 300 mm in diameter or mounted on supporting rings.

About Osram Opto Semiconductors:
OSRAM, Munich, Germany is one of the two leading light manufacturers in the world. Its subsidiary, OSRAM Opto Semiconductors GmbH in Regensburg (Germany), offers its customers solutions based on semiconductor technology for lighting, sensor and visualization applications. Osram Opto Semiconductors has production sites in Regensburg (Germany), Penang (Malaysia) and Wuxi (China). Its headquarters for North America is in Sunnyvale (USA), and for Asia in Hong Kong. Osram Opto Semiconductors also has sales offices throughout the world. For more information go to: www.osram-os.com

About Altatech's Technology and Equipment Expertise:
Soitec's Altatech Division offers a unique portfolio of equipment for mature and advanced materials deposition and holistic defect inspection. It develops highly efficient, cost-effective inspection and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technologies used for R&D and manufacturing of semiconductors, LEDs, MEMS and photovoltaic devices. Altatech Semiconductor S.A. became a subsidiary of Soitec in January 2012.

About Soitec:

Soitec is an international manufacturing company, a world leader in generating and manufacturing revolutionary semiconductor materials at the frontier of the most exciting energy and electronic challenges. Soitec's products include substrates for microelectronics (most notably SOI: Silicon-on-Insulator) and concentrator photovoltaic systems (CPV). The company's core technologies are Smart Cut(TM), Smart Stacking(TM) and Concentrix(TM), as well as expertise in epitaxy. Applications include consumer and mobile electronics, microelectronics-driven IT, telecommunications, automotive electronics, lighting products and large-scale solar power plants. Soitec has manufacturing plants and R&D centers in France, Singapore, Germany, and the United States. For more information, visit: www.soitec.com.

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