Industrial · Corporate (WFE leader) · Santa Clara, CA
Applied Materials
| Vacuum (at rest) | Process chambers vented/idle; load-locks at high vacuum |
|---|---|
| Vacuum (operation) | HV–UHV process chambers: PVD/CVD/ALD/epi, plasma etch, ion implant — multiple steps under a single vacuum ("integrated materials") |
| Power | Plasma sources (RF/DC), ion-implant beams, thermal processing — tool-dependent |
| Voltage | Ion implant to ~MeV-class; plasma bias; high-voltage per tool |
| Product | Wafer-fab equipment: deposition, etch, ion implantation, metrology, inspection |
| Application | Leading-edge logic (gate-all-around, backside power), DRAM/NAND, advanced packaging |
| Customer | TSMC, Intel, Samsung, Micron — nearly every fab worldwide |
Why it matters
The Bay Area vacuum-process elephant: every chamber is a vacuum + plasma problem, and the "integrated materials" approach chains deposition and etch under one vacuum. The opposite of the qubit startups — deep, mature vacuum culture at scale, and the most literal reading of a "vacuum/process company" pivot.