!!! Press Release !!!

AIXTRON DELIVERS FIRST COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE
OVPD R&D SYSTEM TO PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

Advanced R&D on full range of Organic Semiconductor
based Electronic Devices

Aachen/Princeton, March 12th, 2003 - AIXTRON is proud to announce the delivery of an advanced research system to Princeton University (P.U.) for the deposition of state-of-the-art organic materials (plastics) using AIXTRON’s proprietary Organic Vapor Phase Deposition technology (OVPD). The development of this first commercially available OVPD R&D tool is based on the many years of vital OLED experience gained by Prof. Forrest and his expert team at P. U. The delivery of this system marks the start of a three year joint development program between P.U. and AIXTRON, primarily aiming at the development of advanced OLED technology for the display industry. Since the successful installation and start-up of the pre-production OVPD deposition tool at Universal Display Corp. (UDC), many scientists in the OLED R&D community have displayed a keen interest in a smaller tool suitable for research and development purposes. The main target of the design of this OVPD R&D system has therefore been to offer researchers a flexible tool for smaller substrate sizes (4"x4") that is consistent with typical R&D budgets.

The main target of the joint development program with P.U. will be to explore the full range of OVPD production technology, and capability, for the manufacture of OLED displays. Due to the outstanding flexibility of this OVPD system, it is expected that both, solar cells and logical circuits made from organic materials, can be manufactured and developed in the same tool.

The design of this research system builds upon the pioneering work of Prof. Forrest and his team at P.U. who developed and built the first small scale OVPD research system. Prof. Forrest states: "We are very excited about exploring all the possibilities with this new AIXTRON OVPD tool. AIXTRON’s technology enables my students to concentrate on the essential research in organic semiconductors because the AIXTRON tool provides an easy operation and control of the deposition process. Our basic OVPD concept, combined with AIXTRON’s expertise in hardware and process control design have produced a system that offers researchers all over the world the option to simply program a desired structure and get it produced as theoretically designed. This will enable us to accomplish even more challenging R&D and to support the industry with new technology developments."

Tim McEntee, Executive Vice President and COO of AIXTRON Semiconductor Equipment unit states: "We are very happy to continue and intensify our relationship and collaboration with Prof. Forrest, the inventor of OVPD technology. His many years of experience and knowledge of this technology will certainly build an excellent basis for a very fruitful joint development effort focusing on providing outstanding results to the display industry world-wide."

Through an exclusive development and licensing agreement with UDC, AIXTRON is worldwide the exclusive provider of OVPD deposition technology. AIXTRON will further enhance its capability and technical knowledge base through this new collaboration with P.U., allowing it to more rapidly provide the display industry with the advanced deposition capability for high resolution OLED displays.

AIXTRON is, as verified by VLSI Research Inc., the world leading supplier of equipment for semiconductor epitaxy. 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. AIXTRON AG (FSE: AIX ISIN DE0005066203) is listed in the Prime Standard of the German stock exchange (Deutsche Börse AG) and is included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index World and the MSCI World Index.

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© AIXTRON AG, March 12th, 2003

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