!!! Press Release !!!

AIXTRON HEADS NEW GERMAN RESEARCH PROGRAM FOR OLED DISPLAYS

Light Emitting Plastics for next generation Flat Panel Displays

Aachen, September 23rd, 2002 - A 3.5 Mio. € research program devoted exclusively to OVPD technology for OLED Display Applications has just been granted by the German Ministry of Research and Education to a group of researchers headed by AIXTRON. World leading scientists from TU Braunschweig (Prof. Dr. W. Kowalsky), TU Chemnitz (Prof. Dr. D.R.T. Zahn) and the chemical company SynTec GmbH, Wolfen (Dr. A. Richter) have formed a professional team to bring into production the AIXTRON OVPD (Organic Vapor Phase Deposition) technology and to adapt new precursors for this new production process geared towards a highly efficient production technology for full color displays.

The many years of expertise of each group in thin organic light emitting diodes (OLEDS) have now merged together to improve this promising innovative technology. A Tricent® OVPD tool especially developed for OLED production will be installed at TU Braunschweig and Prof. Kowalsky will use more than 12 years experience to develop and optimize both the process and the devices for displays. TU Chemnitz will provide valuable experience in optical characterization of organic structures to develop in-situ characterization tools for OVPD and to increase the understanding of the deposition process. New high-purity starting materials, especially tailored for use in OVPD, will be developed by the SynTec GmbH, which has almost 20 years experience in developing and manufacturing Organic Photoreceptors and chemical components for OLED.

Prof. Dr. Michael Heuken, AIXTRON's Vice President for Corporate Research & Development comments: "Already about 100 companies world-wide are currently developing OLED display technologies to serve a market which, according to market research institutes like Display Search, US, will more than double every year and reach 2.8 billion USD in 2007. We are proud to be heading such an important research co-operation to actively drive development of such sophisticated future markets."

OVPD technology targets small and medium sized full color displays used in e.g. cellular phones, automotive applications and hand-held computers. Due to the properties of thin light-emitting plastics, they are perfectly suited for the display market as the material itself is light emissive and highly power efficient. Key advantages such as lower power consumption, higher brightness levels, faster response rates, higher resolutions, wider viewing angles, flexible forming characteristics (flexible, curved, shaped) as well as distinct lower costs advantages are properties that are not existent in current common display technologies such as LCD.

With an installed base of well over 650 systems world-wide, AIXTRON is, as verified by VLSI Research Inc. the world leading supplier of equipment for semiconductor epitaxy and has been rated once more amongst the 2002 10 BEST in its category in the most recent VLSI Customer Satisfaction Survey. Its equipment is used by a diverse range of customers worldwide to manufacture critical, advanced components such as HBTs, PHEMTs, MESFETs, Lasers, LEDs, Detectors and VCSELs used in fiber optic communications systems, wireless and mobile telephony applications, optical storage devices, illumination, signaling and lighting, as well as a range of other leading edge technologies. The company has an extensive service and support network in over 15 countries.

OVPD^® technology has been exclusively licensed to AIXTRON from Universal Display Corporation (UDC), Ewing, N.J. USA for equipment manufacture. OVPD^® technology is based on an invention by Professor Stephen R. Forrest et. al. at Princeton University, USA, which was exclusively licensed to UDC. AIXTRON and UDC have jointly developed and qualified OVPD^® pre-production equipment.

AIXTRON's many customers include Agere, Alcatel, Anritsu, ATMI, Avalon, AXT, Epson, Honeywell, Infineon, IQE, IQE Silicon Compounds, ITT, JDS-Uniphase, Kopin, LumiLeds, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nortel, Optospeed, Osram, Procomp, Samsung, Showa Denko, Siemens, ST Microelectronics, Sumitomo, Thales, UEC, VPEC as well as numerous Japanese corporations. AIXTRON systems have also been installed in the most renowned research institutes worldwide, including CNRS, Fraunhofer Institute, ITRI-OES, JPL, Meijo University, NDL Taiwan, Research Center Jülich, RIKEN, Sandia Nat Lab, Tsinghua University and the University of Tokyo. AIXTRON is very active in advancing MOCVD technology through collaborations and joint R&D projects with major partners world-wide. AIXTRON AG (FSE: AIX ISIN DE0005066203) is included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index World and the MSCI World Index.

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© AIXTRON AG, September 23, 2002

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