KLA-Tencor Announces New eS805™ Electron-Beam Inspection System

MILPITAS, Calif., Jan. 29, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Today KLA-Tencor Corporation (NASDAQ: KLAC) announced the eS805™, a new electron-beam inspection system for leading-edge chip manufacturers. Benefiting from more than twenty years of KLA-Tencor's e-beam inspection development and manufacturing expertise, the eS805 offers strong capability in detection of very small defects and defects that cause electrical problems in the integrated circuit, such as opens, shorts or reliability issues. The eS805 is also designed to provide supplementary information to the fab's optical inspection systems, with the goal of boosting the ability of the optical inspectors to preferentially capture defects that matter.

"As our customers move toward single-digit nanometer design rules, they will need unprecedented sensitivity to defects of interest—while sampling enough of the wafer to catch a defect excursion," said Bobby Bell, executive vice president of KLA-Tencor's Wafer Inspection Group. "We believe that optical inspection will continue as the dominant defect inspection approach; its speed is essential for adequate wafer coverage, and our engineers have demonstrated some impressive ideas for stretching optical sensitivity to meet our customers' anticipated requirements. Electron-beam inspection will continue to complement optical inspection as needed, and we are continuing to innovate within our e-beam product lines for speed, application breadth and novel methodologies. The new eS805 represents a significant step forward in KLA-Tencor's continually evolving e-beam/optical defect solution, a valuable addition to our industry-leading optical defect inspection/e-beam review portfolio."

The high performance of the new eS805 is driven by the following advances:

• New image computer, new auto-focus subsystem, and higher beam current densities than other commercially available systems, enabling detection of buried electrical defects in "voltage contrast" ("VC") mode over relatively large areas of the die;
• Architecture designed to elicit significant signal from defects hidden at the bottom of high aspect ratio (HAR) structures such as FinFETs and 3D flash; and
• Advanced algorithms that, together with the new image computer and auto-focus system, enable efficient capture of small defects within non-periodic structures, such as logic areas of the cell.

The eS805 is upgradeable from any previous eS3x or eS8xx-series e-beam inspection system, an approach that helps protect a fab's capital investment.

New eS805 e-beam inspection systems have been shipped to leading logic and memory chip manufacturers, where they are being used to upgrade existing e-beam inspection capability or to fulfill requirements for additional inspection capacity in advanced development and production lines. To maintain high performance and productivity, the eS805 tools are backed by KLA-Tencor's global, comprehensive service network. For more information on KLA-Tencor's eS805 e-beam inspection systems, please visit the product web page at: http://www.kla-tencor.com/front-end-defect-inspection/eS800-series.html.

About KLA-Tencor:
KLA-Tencor Corporation, a leading provider of process control and yield management solutions, partners with customers around the world to develop state-of-the-art inspection and metrology technologies. These technologies serve the semiconductor, LED and other related nanoelectronics industries. With a portfolio of industry-standard products and a team of world-class engineers and scientists, the company has created superior solutions for its customers for more than 35 years. Headquartered in Milpitas, Calif., KLA-Tencor has dedicated customer operations and service centers around the world. Additional information may be found at www.kla-tencor.com (KLAC-P).

Forward Looking Statements:
Statements in this press release other than historical facts, such as statements regarding the eS805's expected performance, trends in the semiconductor industry and the anticipated challenges associated with them, expected uses of the eS805 by KLA-Tencor's customers, expected compatibility of the eS805 with other KLA-Tencor tools, and the anticipated cost, operational and other benefits realizable by users of the eS805 tools, are forward-looking statements, and are subject to the Safe Harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on current information and expectations, and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in such statements due to various factors, including delays in the adoption of new technologies (whether due to cost or performance issues or otherwise), the introduction of competing products by other companies or unanticipated technological challenges or limitations that affect the implementation, performance or use of KLA-Tencor's products.

SOURCE KLA-Tencor