Soitec strengthens engineered substrate design expertise with key hires
Industry Luminaries from Leading Semiconductor Companies Join Soitec’s R&D Team
SEMICON WEST, San Francisco, Calif., July 17, 2007—Soitec (Euronext Paris), the world’s leading supplier of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers and other engineered substrates, today announced that
Dr. Bich-Yen Nguyen and Dr. Mohamad Shaheen have joined the company as Fellows. Dr. Nguyen previously led the Crolles Alliance advanced transistor development activities at Freescale Semiconductor, while Dr. Shaheen headed the advanced substrates research group within the component research organization at Intel. Both new hires will focus on the development of new applications and markets for Soitec’s core technologies, and will also support the newly created Marketing, Sales and Customer Group.
“Material innovations at the substrate level are playing an increasingly critical role in allowing manufacturers to realize enhanced device characteristics in terms of speed, power consumption, form factor and other key attributes,” said Carlos Mazuré, chief technical officer and executive vice president at Soitec. “The addition of Dr. Bich-Yen Nguyen and Dr. Mohamad Shaheen highlights the commitment from Soitec to support our manufacturing customers, while continuing to deliver the engineered substrate solutions that will enable next-generation production of advanced electronic devices. Both of these experienced technologists bring a reputation for innovative thinking at the design level to an already accomplished Soitec R&D team and our Marketing, Sales and Customer Group.”
Dr. Nguyen joins Soitec after a twenty-seven-year career at Freescale Semiconductor. In this role, she leveraged her technical expertise in IC processes and materials, CMOS and BiCMOS integration and trouble shooting for process, device and yield-related issues. Her experience in advanced MOS IC technology development, transfer and manufacturing spans numerous technology nodes, ranging from 4?m to 22 nm and beyond.
During her tenure at Freescale, Dr. Nguyen received many illustrious awards and honors, including the Distinguished Innovation Award in 1991; the Motorola Sector Technology High-Impact Technology Award in 1996; the Motorola Master of Innovation Award in 2003; the National Women of Color in Technology Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004; and was also appointed a Motorola Dan Noble Fellow in 2001. In addition to these accomplishments, she has invented and co-invented more than 55 issued patents, 11 pending patents and 8 defensive publications, while authoring and co-authoring more than 70 technical papers in various journals and proceedings.
Dr. Shaheen joins Soitec after a distinguished fifteen-year career at Intel, where he held a number of technical management positions. In his most recent role, Dr. Shaheen was group leader of the advanced substrates technology group within the component research organization focusing on advanced materials and structures for novel devices, such as depleted substrate transistor (DST) and tri-gate. Other positions included project manager of novel memory in the novel device and nanotechnology group; front-end manager of the research and path finding fab; and senior process engineer in thin films, logic technology development, where he was responsible for gate oxide stability, salicide development and copper electrofill. Dr. Shaheen holds more than 75 patents and patent filings in the area of advanced device materials and structures, and has received several awards from Intel for outstanding contributions, including an excellence award from the Technology and Manufacturing Group in 2005.
About the Soitec Group:
The Soitec Group is the world’s leading innovator and provider of the engineered substrate solutions that serve as the foundation for today’s most advanced microelectronic products. The group leverages its proprietary Smart Cut™ technology to engineer new substrate solutions, such as silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers, which became the first high-volume application for this proprietary technology. Since then, SOI has emerged as the material platform of the future, enabling the production of higher performing, faster chips that consume less power.
Today, Soitec produces more than 80 percent of the world’s SOI wafers. Headquartered in Bernin, France, with two high-volume fabs on-site, Soitec has offices throughout the United States, Japan and Taiwan, along with a new manufacturing site under construction in Singapore.
Two other divisions, Picogiga International (Les Ulis) and Tracit Technologies (Bernin), complete the Soitec Group. Picogiga focuses on delivering advanced substrates solutions, including III-Vs epiwafers and gallium nitride (GaN)-based wafers, to the compound material world for the manufacture of high-frequency electronics and other optoelectronic devices. Tracit, on the other hand, focuses on thin-film layer transfer technologies used to manufacture advanced substrates for power ICs and microsystems, as well as generic circuit transfer technology for applications such as image sensors and 3D-integration. Both shares and convertible bonds for the Soitec Group are listed on Euronext Paris.
Soitec, Smart Cut and UNIBOND are trademarks of S.O.I.TEC Silicon On Insulator Technologies
Company Contact:
Camille Darnaud-Dufour
Vice President, Communications
Soitec
Mobile (France): +33-6-79-49-51-43
E-mail: camille.darnaud-dufour@soitec.com
Agency Contact:
Kelly Picasso
Sr. Account Associate
MCA
Tel: +1-650-968-8900, ext. 127
E-mail: kpicasso@mcapr.com