Newsletters - October 2000
Welcome to SGT's now-and-then Newsletter. It's hard to believe that more than a year has passed since we last committed pen to paper. A lot has happened in that time so let's get on with it.

New People at SGT
Colin Wardle joined us in April to help in the admin side of the business. Colin is fast becoming a Jack-of-all-Trades around the office.

Scott Morrison is the latest addition to the SGT fold. He started his career with National in Greenock in 1989, spent a pleasant 3 years at Seagate and joined us in June after a brief spell with Kokusai. Scott is looking after our service engineering functions.

New Products
Over the years we have trail blazed the UK territory for some of the industries most prestigious companies - such as Lam Research and Semitool. No matter how good the company, it's always difficult to grab the customers attention.

To illustrate my point; in 1985 a customer told me "The last thing the industry needs is another plasma etch supplier!" He was talking about the then unknown Lam Research!!

So it's a welcome change for us to announce our arrangement with "household name" Matrix to provide sales and service support for their ever expanding range of plasma strip and etch tools. The latest addition is the 150-200mm single wafer cassette-to-cassette Bobcat. You don't need a spreadsheet to figure that the Bobcat offers very low Cost-of Ownership:

Very competitive price (call us on 01698 307070)
Small footprint
High throughput

During the recent recession there was a lot of demand for quality used equipment. RiteTrack supply remanufactured 86 & 88 Series coat and develop track systems as well as their own new track systems for coat, develop and substrate cleaning (aqueous, solvent and Megasonic)

Persys, based in Israel and founded by ex Intel engineers supply unique tools for the industry. Their external torch systems for diffusion furnaces are used throughout the industry. Recent innovations include a post furnace burn box that allows high hydrogen concentration anneals. Another unusual product is their CV dot masks for single wafer sputter systems.

Last year we told you about Chang Min Tech. Their automatic 4 point probe systems are proving to be very popular. One consistent theme has been the disbelief that we can provide a system that competes in functionality with systems costing 3 times the price. Our demo system has proved our claims. Call if you would like to see for yourself.

Poly-Flow continues to surprise us. It almost seems that they go out of their way to prove that they can design an automatic cleaning system for anything - how about a 25 foot long version of a tube cleaner for cleaning fibre rods. The latest innovation that we're only beginning to get information on is a test wafer recovery/recycling station.

We have recently installed our first ASI plasma diagnostic system at a Scottish wafer fab. ASI describe the Hercules as "utilising the Self Excited Electron Resonance Spectroscopy (SEERS) which provides volume and reciprocally averaged values of electron collision rate, electron density and bulk power dissipated in the plasma body for effective process monitoring and optimisation" Couldn't have put it better myself! Among other things Hercules is ideal for Etch chamber matching Real-time chamber conditioning

Training Seminars
We've been running technology training seminars at Strathclyde University since 1987. Out of curiosity we trawled through our records and were surprised to find that over 1400 students from all over Europe have participated. We've also had people coming from Canada, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Semiconductor Process Technology seminar and Yield/Failure Analysis seminar will both be run in May and September 2001.

SGT Web Site
Entering the 21st Century without a web presence was a bit embarrassing to a "high tech" company - so it was with great pleasure and no small relief to recently unveil our web site at: www.sgtsiliconglen.com On the web site you will find:

Details of our products
Copies of mailings
List of our suppliers
Easy product finder

All linked together for easy navigation. We plan to add more features and expand the information included so any feedback or suggestions will be welcome.

The following carries the usual disclaimers; no resemblance to persons living or dead etc.

That's it folks. We'll try to get the next Newsletter out before you all retire - but if you do retire leave a forwarding address. We know that you would hate to miss it.