(NASDAQ Global Select Market: ASMI)

Industry: Semiconductors
On the web: http://www.asm.com
Employees: 11,832

ASM International N.V. was incorporated on March 4, 1968 as a Netherlands naamloze vennootschap, or public limited liability company, and was previously known as Advanced Semiconductor Materials International N.V. As a semiconductor capital equipment supplier, the Company designs, manufactures and sells production systems and services to its customers for the production of semiconductor devices, or integrated circuits. The semiconductor capital equipment market is composed of three major market segments: wafer processing equipment, assembly and packaging equipment, and test equipment. ASMI is mainly active in the wafer processing and assembly and packaging market segments. The front-end manufacturing process, or wafer processing, could be divided in three distinct manufacturing processes: wafer manufacturing, transistor formation, known as front-end of the line processing, and interconnect formation, known as back-end of the line. It develops and sells technology, develops and manufactures equipment, and provides services used by semiconductor device manufacturers in each of these sections of front-end manufacturing. In the wafer manufacturing process a large single crystal of very pure silicon is grown from molten silicon. The crystal is then sliced into a large number of thin slices, or wafers, of single crystalline silicon. These slices are polished to an atomic level flatness before the next steps are executed. For advanced applications, some layers are deposited on the wafer for later use, by either epitaxy or diffusion/oxidation. Epitaxial wafers are even flatter and contain fewer defects at the surface than polished wafers. Some wafers are made with an embedded electrically insulating layer, such as silicon oxide, just below a very thin top layer of pure silicon. These special wafers are called Silicon-on Insulator or SOI wafers and are used for some of the most advanced microprocessors. The finished wafers, still without pattern on them, are shipped to the integrated device manufacturers and foundries for further processing. When the wafer with confirmed working integrated circuits is received in the back-end facility, wafers are first cut into individual dies or chips by a dicing saw or sometimes a laser. The dies are then separated and a single die is picked and attached to a leadframe or other substrate by a bonding process. The leadframe or substrate provides the interface between the electrical circuit on the die and the system in which the die is incorporated. Stamping a pattern through a strip of copper or iron-nickel alloy produces Leadframes. For high precision leadframes are produced by an etching process to achieve a shorter time to market. Stamped frames are typically used for very high volumes on mature designs. The leadframes are plated with a thin layer of silver or a stacked layer of nickel, palladium, and gold on appropriate places, in order to allow a wire to be easily attached to its surface. The electrical connection of the electrical circuit to the leadframe is made by wire bonding. The Company's front-end operations are conducted through wholly owned subsidiaries, the three most important being ASM Europe B.V. The Company's operations are subject to many environmental laws and regulations wherever it operates governing, among other things, air emissions, wastewater discharges, the use and handling of hazardous substances, waste disposal and the investigation and remediation of soil and groundwater contamination. As of December 31, 2005, ASM had 9,451 employees.

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