Obducat launches revolutionary NIL system for mass production

Date Announced: 06 Feb 2007 Obducat introduced Sindre™, its High Volume Manufacturing system for Nanoimprint Lithography (NIL) to an audience numbering more than 200 specially invited guests, shareholders, industrial partners, users and the press.During the past five years Nanoimprint has established a place in the US$ 4-5 Billion lithography market as a solution which is simple and economical, with excellent image resolution; however until now, no production solution existed.Obducat, who enjoys a 40% share of the worlds installed base of NIL systems, believes the Sindre™ system offers a manufacturing level solution to producers of consumer products such as cameras, mobile phones, palmtops, flat screens and next generation hard disk drives as well as optical storage media like HD-DVD and Blu-ray, many of who already employ NIL with research level tools from Obducat. Products within optoelectronics already benefit from Obducat’s production technology. Patrik Lundstrom, CEO of Obducat, said that: “The industrial breakthrough was a year earlier than planned since one of Obducat customers started manufacturing of commercial products early last year. This already very positively influenced our ongoing client relations in respect of high volume manufacturing.”Obducat's solution is based on two key technologies developed by Obducat. IPS™ the inversion of a hard master into an Intermediate Polymer Stamp (used once for imprinting and then descarded). This limits contamination risk and increases master life-time. STU™, Simultaneously combined UV and Thermal NIL, allowing the complete imprint sequence to be performed at a constant temperature. The Sindre™ system, named after the legendary blacksmith dwarf of the Nordic mythology, is able to imprint 30 wafers per hour up to 8-inch diameter substrates and subsequent model will be capable of up to 90 wafers per hour.Henri Bergstrand, Chairman of the Board, said: “The technology will increase capacity and allow substantial cost savings without sacrificing quality.” International InterestLeading world companies have not been slow to recognise the potential of Obducat's science. Japanese technology leader Canon Marketing Japan signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Obducat this week. Hiroshi Shibuya, Senior Managing Director of Canon marketing, Japan, said: “Canon has identified the Nano imprint market as a very interesting future area of growth. We have high expectations for our new cooperation and we believe that Obducat’s expertise in Nano imprint will bring new and innovative solutions to the Japanese market.”“Distribution is the key to our market,” said Frédéric Hervier, Marketing and Sales Director at Obducat. “Asia is a very important market and together with Canon we can better penetrate the vast potential of the Japanese market. Obducat’s launch was well attended by company representatives from countries as Korea, the United States of America and Japan. Obducat currently supplies its Nano Imprint Lithography (NIL) and Electron Beam recorder (EBR) technology to Samsung, Thomson, GE Plastics, Fujitsu, Dai Nippon Printing and others. Obducat has 200 ongoing patents related to its NIL and E-beam technologies.

Contact
Anna Ek, Coordinator Marketing & Sales Obducat Phone: +46 40 36 21 08

E-mail:[email protected]

Web Site:www.obducat.com