Southeast Asian supply

, a supplier of lithography and laser-processing systems used to manufacture semiconductors and nanotechnology devices, has received multiple orders from several Southeast Asian customers for its NanoTech 190 lithography systems.

The NanoTech 190 tools, specifically designed for thin-film head (TFH) applications, will be utilised for back-end rowbar processing, the processing step required to add the aerodynamic surface to rows of TFH devices before wafer singulation. The lithography systems will be delivered to the customers' facilities in Malaysia, Thailand and China.

The increasing number of consumer electronics products requiring small drives, such as portable digital music players, has contributed to a resurgence in the TFH market.

According to Dennis Waid, president of Peripheral Research Corporation and member of Ultratech's technical advisory board, "Storage memory capacity for handheld devices can be increased significantly with a small-format hard drive, which has the same form factor as flash-random-access memory (RAM).

“Today, most cell phones, PDAs, and digital cameras use flash-RAM for memory rather than hard drives. To address this transition and growing demand, disk-drive manufacturers are making thin-film heads for the digital consumer market, as well as for high-end enterprise storage, increasing the need for application-specific lithography equipment."

Waid added that Peripheral Research Corporation anticipates the disk-drive market will grow at a 14-percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2008.