August Technology Broadens Nontraditional Semiconductor Applications to Inspect Lasers

BLOOMINGTON, Minn., Aug. 8 -- August Technology Corp., supplier of automated visual defect inspection equipment for the microelectronics industry, announced the sale of NSX series systems to manufacturers of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs).

"The flexibility of the NSX has allowed us to pursue applications in new and emerging market segments, such as VCSELs, and successfully implement the systems into nonsilicon production environments," stated Mayson Brooks, August Technology's vice president of sales and marketing. "These compound semiconductor companies are able to achieve higher yields by using the NSX to identify defective devices which assist in determining the upstream root cause of the defect. Additionally, the NSX allows companies to continue to process and inspect partial wafers of these expensive substrates."

According to market research firm ElectroniCast Corp., VCSELs, which are used in high-speed data and telecommunications applications to convert electronic signals into optical signals, are the fastest growing segment of the optoelectronics market and are expected to triple in the next three years reaching $3.4 billion by 2004.